


01011001

by winterbiss



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Gore (Detroit: Become Human), Drug Abuse, Hank/Connor is more of an implied background thing, I don't know how I slipped into the RK900/Gavin hell, I fucking love Cyberpunk, I just had to write this to write down a few ideas I had about the whole thing, M/M, and a very slow burn, and about Gavin, but I did, it's more of a drama really, lots of swearing, police work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18003380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbiss/pseuds/winterbiss
Summary: Violence, police work, androids. What could possibly go wrong? And how much uncompromising android does it take to crack a certain Detective's shell of denial, temper and selfishness?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> English is obviously not my first language, not even my second. Please do feel free to point out errors I made, else I won't be able to improve. I hope errors don't destroy the atmosphere I'm trying to build here.
> 
> Plus I'm a sucker for slow burns and drama. Don't expect this to be easy for anyone involved, huehue.

               It had, in fact, not been the best day for Detective Reed.

               First, Fowler had had the audacity to assign him to patrol duty, because they were ‘seriously understaffed’ and ‘all Riot Units were already dispatched’ and ‘Allen is going to shoot someone because _his_ unit had been out there for three days straight’ and all that bullshit, so they made _him_ of all people go on patrol. It had been almost 8 years since he had been a beat constable, he had worked his ass off to get into Homicide and he hadn’t missed the streets one bit. To make matters even worse, Fowler had insisted he wore his uniform, not that ‘ragged piece of leather he called a jacket that made him look like he just crawled out of the goddamn sewers.’ It wasn’t even the uniform Gavin hated. It was the locker room.

               He and the Captain had yelled at each other for what had felt like half an hour, and in the end, Gavin had stormed out of the Captain’s office with a fresh disciplinary in his file, a promise to lose his fucking _job_ if he stepped out of line again in the near future and a blood pressure of precisely 153 over 91. The latter had been something he had actively tried to ignore, because it had come from Hank’s robo-toy halfway across the bullpen, yet his ears and traitor brain had decided to filter that thing’s voice out from the bustle dominating the station. The only reason he hadn’t made a beeline for the plastic motherfucker and its drunkard loser of a partner or just outright pull his gun on it had been the simple fact that he wanted to keep his job, at least for today. And probably tomorrow too.

               It had taken a fair amount of willpower to make same beeline towards the locker room instead. Automatic doors were a pain in his ass today, because slamming those was no longer possible. He had slammed the door of his locker instead. Thrice, because he had to re-open the thing two times; once because he had forgotten his badge on his jeans, the second time because he had figured taking his smokes wasn’t such a bad idea.

               The only, _only_ fucking ray of hope for the day had been his assigned partner: Chris Miller. For some reason, he still tolerated Gavin in a way, even when he was at his worst, unlike the rest of the precinct. They were simply done with shitbag Reed, and ignorance was even more degrading than anger and insults, nobody knew this better than the shitbag himself. He couldn’t really blame them, so he tried not to give a shit, which worked fine most of the time. Plus, the man had agreed to be the one taking the tracker for the obligatory camera drone, so Gavin could just sidle out of the thing’s field of view to smoke whenever he felt like it.

               His ray of hope had, however, quickly turned into a path straight to hell, because Chris just had to be the most understanding and friendly cop to have ever wandered the fucking streets of fucking Detroit, and every single word the man had said had Gavin breathing fire and brimstone. Silently, of course, because he did really want to keep his job. At least the man had let him smoke inside the car, even turning off the goddamn AI telling them that ‘smoke was present’ and ‘something may be smoldering’ and that ‘smoking was forbidden inside Detroit City Police Cars.’ Though, it was probably mostly because Gavin had started hurling curses at the thing every time it piped up.

               But the worst part had been the incidents with androids involved. Not because Gavin despised them in general, but because they had fucking _rights_ now and the goddamn police was there to _protect_ their rights just like they would protect a human’s rights. Details were still being worked out, but the instructions from Fowler had been clear: Treat them like you would any human, apply the same rights for now, can’t go wrong with that. Gavin would’ve been happy to tell him just how _wrong_ it was, but he was at least smart enough to keep his mouth shut about that.

               By far the most unnerving part of his day had been the android that had been assaulted in some dark fucking alley. It had been designed to look like a young woman – or so the Detective had presumed, because its exterior had been almost completely burned, half of its body no longer working so it had looked and moved like a fucking zombie straight out of a shitty horror movie. And it had been _friendly_ , so _fucking friendly_ when it had explained that it was going to be fine because its central and auxiliary processors had not been damaged thanks to re-routed coolant and it would just need repairs on its several non-essential systems it had had to shut down to extinguish itself. A few punks had set it on fire in that alley after pouring gas all over it, yet it tried to beam because it had survived after all. With half its mouth burned to a crisp, artificial teeth always showing, Gavin had had almost asked her to _stop fucking trying to smile_.

               It had unsettled Gavin in a way he had deemed impossible, and he had had to keep his arms crossed because his hands had felt like they were shaking.

               The last thing he actively remembered was driving back to the precinct with Chris at the wheel and a swearing perp in the back of the car, then tossing the asshole into one of their drunk tanks, and insulting the Lieutenant and his fucking plastic toy on his way to the locker room, because they happened to walk out of the break room right in front of him. It felt fucking _good_ to let off some steam, and he knew perfectly well that Hank probably wouldn’t dare to actually start a physical fight with him because _his_ disciplinary record was even worse than Gavin’s. Insulting Hank and his toy had always been a safe bet.

               At least until today.

               He must’ve looked like a complete idiot when the fucking robot casually stepped forward and just clocked him in the face, as if it was the most natural thing in the whole world. He didn’t even have the decency to really swing at him, because the fucker knew he packed a punch far beyond that of a human. He didn’t have enough pity on Gavin to knock him out cold so he’d at least miss the humiliation of half the precinct applauding the fucking thing either. It was a precise, a quick punch, probably calculated at least a million times with all probable outcomes so it knew exactly how and where to strike.

               The applause from quite a few others, Hank’s laughter, his own grunts all sounded muffled as blood was roaring in his ears, the cold floor tiles against his jaw and chin were almost soothing, but he pushed himself back up with both arms, much too stubborn to stay on the ground for even a split second longer than necessary. Blurry colors bled into one another, he felt like throwing up on the spot and swallowed bile, but his stubbornness didn’t allow him to do anything else but get up and stare at the blurry outlines of the plastic motherfucker as if he was about to murder that thing with his bare hands.

               “I think,” the thing said, and in Gavin’s head it resonated like something from a shitty flashback scene from an even shittier movie with artificial echo added, “this will indeed be reason enough for my first disciplinary.”

               It wasn’t that Gavin wasn’t ready to go into full brawl mode with the fucker, it was the fact that he knew he wouldn’t land a single hit because his head was still swimming, his heartbeat was still pounding in his ears, so loud he almost missed how fucking _proud_ the thing sounded, and he wanted a lot of things right now – making even more of an ass of himself was not among them. He blamed it on some sort of tactical close quarters combat update the cocksucker must’ve received, not because he believed himself, but because it made him feel better. There was no shame in losing to a machine that wasn’t built to lose after all, right? He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand and, for once in his life, did the smart thing: He walked away.

               Not trying to punch back had been the right decision, as it turned out – it took the Detective all of four tries to hit the fingerprint scanner on his locker correctly, as if technology itself had decided to fuck him over today. It wasn’t his fault, of course. It wasn’t his dizziness or his shaking hand or rapidly dropping blood pressure that caused him to miss and press his gloved fingers against the cold steel like a fucking moron, it was the locker’s fault. It was _always_ someone else’s fault, never his own. He was good at lying to himself like that, and it made things easier. It made all his anger and shitty attitude towards literally everyone feel justified.

               And a tiny, tiny voice locked away somewhere in the far back of his head noted that he had had it coming. For a long time, actually. That he deserved it. That he deserved everyone else cheering the plastic prick on for flooring him. He grit his teeth, voluntarily intensifying the throbbing in his right cheekbone because it distracted him from that fucking thing others would have called conscience. Shit, he had a reputation to uphold.

               He almost tore the shirt of his uniform as he pulled it over his head and it wouldn’t immediately come off, stuck somewhere between his shoulder and neck, because apparently clothing was out to get him as well. It was childish how much it annoyed him, but he wasn’t feeling like an adult anyway. More like a bratty teenager whose parents had finally had enough of his attitude, and he had received the first beating of his life. It was, of course, not the first time he had been punched in the face, not by far. He had been in more fistfights than he could remember, but this hadn’t even been a real fight. It had been a _statement_.

               And just like a bratty teenager, he briefly considered calling in sick tomorrow, even if it only was to avoid all the ridicule and laughter aimed at him. He knew it wouldn’t even happen behind his back, he and his colleagues were far past that, they would be right in his face about it. Maybe someone would get the CCTV footage of his stupid fucking face and the punch thrown at it, he was quite sure not even Fowler would have intervened if that shit went viral in the precinct. He quickly doffed the idea however, not because he didn’t want to feel like a pussy, but because there was something inside him nobody else would have ever given him credit for: A sense of responsibility. The precinct was absolutely swamped, and if Fowler wanted him to go on patrol tomorrow, he’d go. Not without the most colorful language he could come up with, of course.

 

               * * *

 

               At precisely 3:16 AM, his phone started ringing and almost vibrated off the bedside table before his sleep-drugged and clumsy fingers could take hold of it. Technically, throwing it through the closed window was an option, but he was too drowsy to aim properly, and in all honesty, he didn’t want to replace the fucking window either. He was awake enough to realize that, even though he didn’t sound like it.

               “Mmm?” he grunted, phone pressed more against his jaw than anything else.

               “Reed,” the Captain’s voice replied barely audible, causing Gavin to adjust the phone on the side of his head. “I need you downtown ASAP.”

               “What—,” he mumbled, cut off by a _sharp_ kick to his thigh from the other side of the bed, causing him to bite the tip of his tongue to avoid any other noise that would have escaped him otherwise. Mouthing a ‘fuck you,’ he slid out of bed, never once looking back to the heel that had connected with his leg. “What happened?” he continued eventually after a few steps towards the living room.

               “All I know is someone fell off the New Penobscot Building.”

               “Sounds a little like suicide to me.” No, it didn’t. Fowler wouldn’t have called him in the middle of the fucking night if it had been suicide, he knew that much. He picked his boxers from yesterday up with one hand, keeping the phone pressed against his head with his shoulder when he needed two hands to pull the damn thing up.

               “Hands tied behind their back, blindfolded… still think it’s suicide?” Fowler sighed, because Gavin just _had_ to argue instead of just doing his goddamn job.

               “Alright, alright. Gimme, uh… ten minutes. Nah, make that fifteen, I need coffee.”

               The little beep and suddenly bright phone screen against his bruised cheek told him that Fowler hadn’t bothered with a reply. He put the phone down on the kitchen table littered with empty bottles, beer cans and other shit, almost knocking over another empty can and sighed. Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger, he used what little light his phone’s lock screen shed to find the Aspirin on the kitchen counter and downed a handful with leftover Whiskey from one of the bottles. His thigh would probably bruise as well, he mused as he buttoned his jeans. Even less incentive to go and change in the fucking locker room, although he doubted Fowler would send him on patrol tomorrow. At least not if tonight went somewhat well.

 

               * * *

 

               People had become paranoid over the last few days and weeks. He had to pass not one but three road blocks on his way, one of them set up by the fucking National Guard still present in the city. Gavin could already feel his patience wearing thin when one of the Army fuckers had to scan his biometric badge twice before letting him through. Maybe it was revenge for not turning down his shitty old school industrial music while he was waiting, and the poor armored woman was confronted with one Trent Reznor telling the world that he wanted to fuck someone like an animal, among other things.

               The good thing about road blocks was that you could just leave your car in the middle of the fucking street, which was precisely what Gavin did with his black 2033 Ford Mustang. He wouldn’t even have bothered to lock it, but ever since the late 20s, physical keys had gone mostly extinct and the car simply locked itself when he moved far enough away with the transponder in his pocket.

               Holographic screens the size of a truck each had been set up in front of the building to block the view on whatever waited behind them, policemen were guarding the single entrance they had left open and CSI was busy carrying shitloads of stuff inside, as usual, all of them wearing their usual overalls along with the masks.

               Fortunately, the guy at the entrance next to the holographic ‘POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS’ cordon was someone Gavin knew. Or so he thought. It would mean less hassle with his badge and explaining that he was with Homicide and why the fuck he was here in the middle of the night. What it _actually_ meant was that the guy shot him a look usually reserved for things crawling out of sewers or dumpsters, and Gavin figured that he must have, at some point, insulted the guy too. No surprise there. Admittedly, his face may have even looked like he had indeed just crawled out of a dumpster, and to avoid any discussion, he simply flashed his badge at the guy without a word.

               “They’re waiting for you, Detective,” the man said, gesturing towards the opening between the holographic covers, and Gavin dearly wished for a hot cup of coffee. Black. Strong. He’d need that for dealing with _several_ people waiting for him. He gave the man a curt nod and walked through the cordon, the letters spazzing and fizzling back into view as he went through them.

               There were only a handful of people present behind the visual covers, and all but one were from CSI, taking notes and photos and 3D scans and samples with little droppers and cotton swabs and whatnot. The last one was some guy in a mostly white jacket, hands folded behind his back, just fucking _watching_ CSI work. Gavin dearly hoped he wasn’t with the feds.

               And then, all of a sudden, he fucking _wished_ for a fed instead. That would’ve meant he would be out of this shitshow of a crime scene quickly.

               Coffee wouldn’t have done him any good, because he would’ve dropped the cup in this precise moment. He had seen his fair share of crime scenes, from disemboweled people hanging from a picket fence to someone smeared generously across half a mile of magnetic train tracks. Hell, he had even seen mutilated and dead children all the way up to babies, and people hitting concrete with terminal velocity after their 9,81 m/s² acceleration was never pretty, but it was nothing he couldn’t stomach. Brains on the sidewalk, intestines that looked like someone had brought their nasty old garden hose, broken hollow bones sticking out of arms and legs, he’d seen it all.

               What he _hadn’t_ seen so far was not one, but five crushed bodies in pools of blue blood. No intestines, no bones, no brains, only external casing, wires, gooey liquid too viscous to be any kind of blood leaking from their smashed cranial areas, a hand sticking up from what looked like the rest of a spine, as if it was trying to reach to the high heavens with its cramped fingers, half covered by artificial skin. Tubes that resembled intestines a little too closely had leaked from one of the things’ chest, plating and reinforced ribs sticking out like it had exploded from the inside. The same android’s dislocated lower jaw and the rest of his bashed in face looked like it was still screaming, its limp tongue hanging out of the corner of its mouth like it was a fucking dog being taken for a car ride, and for a split-second Gavin hoped those things wouldn’t suddenly reactivate for whatever reason. He’d had enough android zombie shit for one day already.

               There was no fucking way the impact alone had messed them up this bad, though.

               The thought of _‘What the fuck does Homicide have to do with this?’_ almost made its way past his lips, but he bit it back just in time. Androids were people now, and this was no longer damaged property but full-fledged murder. Maybe manslaughter, depending on the circumstances, of course. His disdain for androids briefly clashed with his sense of duty, with the latter pounding the former quite hard into the dust.

               What he _also_ hadn’t anticipated was the fact that fucking shit-for-brains Connor was here. He would’ve put up with a fed any day if it meant not seeing that bastard for a day. It’d gotten new clothes as well, mostly white, Gavin noted, as if it needed to underline its fucking innocent face any more. But English could be a treacherous language: ‘They’ had apparently not been meant to indicate multiple people but rather the RK800 unit. It was the more sensitive pronoun, or maybe the cop outside had just wanted to piss Gavin off, knowing how much he liked to degrade these things to… well, things.

               He bit back another wave of insults that wanted to push their way past his lips so very desperately, settling on a rather diplomatic “What the fuck went down here, dipshit?” instead. For someone like Gavin Reed, this was the epitome of diplomacy.

               It was only then he realized he wasn’t talking to Connor at all, and at the same time, he was. The thing did seem to understand it was being talked to, because it turned, and it looked like someone had taken that fucking soft face of Connor and photoshopped it to look a little more intimidating, a little more masculine. Or a lot, judging by the way it narrowed its eyes. Grey eyes, the color of ice with oxygen still trapped inside, and that in itself changed its whole appearance into something more threatening. Gavin’s eyes flickered to the thing’s jacket briefly, confirming his initial thought: This wasn’t RK800 with its fucking serial number of thirteen-something, this was something else. The model number read RK900, the first three digits of its serial number identical to that of the jerkface back at the precinct.

               What annoyed Gavin most was that he very well knew the first three digits of Connor’s serial number by now. It annoyed him even more than standing there like a fucking idiot and staring at the thing. His mouth was probably open too – _congratulations, Detective Fuckwit –_ because he had to close it to purse his lips. Not that he’d ever admit to being surprised or caught off guard, he’d play it off as lack of sleep and annoyance and _whoever asked could just fuck right off_.

               “Detective Reed,” it said, and the recipient of those words wasn’t quite sure whether he was delighted or disturbed by the fact that Not-Connor didn’t even _try_ to smile, let alone sound welcoming or warm. “I believe we haven’t met before.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since people asked - this is the song Gavin was listening to in the car (warning, explicit and somewhat disturbing and fucking awesome): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTFwQP86BRs

               „—while the limbs have been subject to severe violence and force, far exceeding anything a human or even non-military issue android could muster without any outside—”

               Gavin wasn’t listening. It was not like he was _ignoring_ Not-Connor, but his brain kept spacing out whenever it had managed to gather a little bit of information from the android’s words while it was sharing its first tidbits of information with him. Even while he looked at the thing, his mind just wandered off, although the rest of his body was alert enough to at least act like he was listening.

               “—off the building. It is unlikely someone gained access by illegal means, as neither the human guard nor the security system reported anything out of the ordinary, so it—”

               The Detective turned to look at the bodies strewn about the concrete in front of him, folding his arms in front of his chest and pursing his lips once again. Yeah, those things had already been messed up before they were thrown off the roof of one of Detroit’s most iconic buildings, and that made matters a lot worse. It literally meant zero clues to go on if whoever did this had been careful enough to not leave any traces. Tearing a few android bodies apart on a roof left traces, but smuggling them inside while all the violence had taken place somewhere else, somewhere probably scrubbed clean by now? That would be a bitch.

               “—renders any reactivation impossible.”

               Gavin blinked. Once. “Come again?”

               “The voltage that has been applied to their central processors,” the android repeated in the very same tone as before, “it destroyed their brains, one might say. Reactivation is impossible, and I doubt their storage units have been left intact. The perpetrators were rather proficient.”

               Yeah, of course. The dead didn’t usually talk about what happened to them, at least the human ones. Gavin had worked exclusively with human casualties so far, since destroyed androids had been considered property damage until a few weeks ago, and therefore nothing Homicide would busy themselves with. Androids were different now however, and he vaguely remembered something Hank’s plastic buddy had said once.

               “What about uploaded memory? Androids can do that, right? Save it in some cloud at Cyberlife or whatever?”

               The reaction wasn’t what he had expected. Not-Connor turned its head towards him, regarding him as if he had just either insulted its ancestors or as if the thing hadn’t even remotely expected him to know _anything_ about androids. Or it was something else entirely, because that thing’s _fucking_ face was so _fucking_ hard to read. It was easier to tell what a brick wall was thinking.

               “That is a feature exclusive to the RK series,” it eventually said, “and classified at that.”

               Gavin laughed one of his bitter little laughs, one that forced its way past its lips without his consent, one that was not born of amusement but rather of disbelief with a hint of cynicism. He raised his right hand to massage the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger, then produced his cigs from an inside pocket of his jacket with a sigh. So Hank’s shitty robot was a snitch, or he was just stupid as fuck – the former was more likely. He’s heard the thing talk at crime scenes before, and Gavin had to admit that Connor might be a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. Not that he’d ever voice those thoughts in his life.

               “’s too bad you can’t kill me right here for knowing that shit, ain’t it?” He pulled a smoke from the pack with his lips, pocketing the rest, his words a little slurred from then on due to the cig between his dry lips. He didn’t plan on allowing the android to comment on that, so he continued almost seamlessly: “So you’re saying we have no way of talking to the dead. Shit, that kinda makes them a lot more human.”

               If Gavin’s attitude towards the destroyed androids was something Not-Connor didn’t like, it certainly didn’t show. It simply nodded, but then took a step forward to crouch next to one of the skinless skulls with artificial spine still attached. The Detective had seen Connor do that kind of shit before, but he had never been close enough to get a good view, so he watched with a hint of curiosity as the fingers touched the bare skull and the skin retracted. It reminded him of the way grease dispersed after a single drop of soap, as if the skin itself was shy of touching another android.

               “Mm.” The RK unit tilted its head ever so slightly, then got back up. “No accessible storage, as presumed. The ‘dead’ will unfortunately remain silent, Detective.”

               Gavin didn’t know _why_ , but the fact that the thing didn’t wipe its fingers on its pants or jacket or _anywhere_ irritated him, and he had to remind himself that it wasn’t like touching an actual corpse. For all he knew an android’s body was way more sterile than anything on or in him right now, including the cigarette between his lips, the one he lit with the cheap red lighter from his pocket.

               “Where the _fuck_ are Anderson and his fucking robot anyway when you need ‘em?” he muttered. “Why’re they not taking care of this shit?”

               Not-Connor turned its head again slightly, and Gavin couldn’t help but notice the LED at its temple turn yellow for two, maybe three seconds. “They are investigating an alleged suicide in Bloomfield and will be unavailable for at least three more hours.”

               Gavin gaped. He could tell, because the cigarette almost slipped from his lips and he had to intervene with his fingers, almost burning his thumb. Did that fucker just—?

               “Connor sends his love,” it added flatly, and Gavin was fucking _happy_ about it, because it gave him something else to do.

               “Yeah, tell him he can go _fuck_ himself,” the Detective muttered, flicking his barely smoked cig over his shoulder. It was something he had learned on his second investigation: Better not leave any shit stained with your DNA too close to a body.

               Not-Connor had the generosity to ignore him as it took a few steps past the bodies, towards the building’s massive entrance doors made of either glass or something that resembled glass. It carefully stepped over a severed android arm lying about, stopped briefly to let a CSI member through and eventually turned its head slightly.

               “Are we not going to take a look at the roof?”, it asked, and once again Gavin felt like an idiot, like a first-grader that had to be taken by the hand because he had never before seen a fucking crime scene, let alone investigated one. With a scowl, he reluctantly followed the android, avoiding the severed arm altogether instead of stepping over it.

               Truth be told, Gavin wasn’t very excited about the idea of checking the roof. Heights weren’t his favorite thing, and although he was still a few steps away from acrophobia, there were certainly more enjoyable things than looking down the edge of a fucking skyscraper while CSI was scurrying about.

               However, there were other things coming to mind as he followed the strange android through the glass doors. On the one hand, he literally had no idea who the fuck Not-Connor actually was, if Fowler really assigned him, why the asshole hadn’t said anything about it on the phone (no, Gavin could figure that one out – Fowler didn’t want to listen to Gavin’s bitching over the phone and threaten him with another disciplinary just to get him to move his ass), what exactly he was supposed to do with the plastic fucker… and on the other hand, he didn’t allow himself to be even more unprofessional about this. He would have to bring it up later, but right now, he had a job to do.

               A job he took somewhat seriously, because it was the only thing he had left.

               He clicked his tongue to get the android’s attention, then nodded towards the ostentatious reception desk staffed with what he hoped was a human. Not-Connor took the hint and followed him, and he briefly felt a little like a K9 Unit with his dog at his heels. If this was how Hank felt with his robot buddy, he could understand why he had wanted the thing to stick around.

               The security guard at the reception frowned as the pair walked up to him. Gavin rested his right elbow on the counter and flashed his badge with a satisfied smirk – he knew very well he must’ve looked like hell, and so he enjoyed the authority his badge gave him even more. Especially in front of people like this guy; short, grey hair, moustache, tidy uniform, the condescending look he had shot Gavin when he had walked up… ah, yes. At least the photo on his badge didn’t have bed hair or a massive bruise on the side of the face, which seemed to pacify the guy somewhat. He still made a point to study the badge for a few seconds.

               “Reed, DPD,” Gavin introduced himself despite all this, “This is—”

               Shitshit _shit_. What exactly _was_ the thing he was with? Fuck, he wasn’t going to give the guy the satisfaction of fumbling with words now, and he even covered his hesitation with a nonchalant gesture towards the android. “—the RK unit assigned to this case.”

               Yeah, he could practically feel the android’s eyes burning through the back of his head.

               “What can I do for you, Mister Reed?”, the guard asked, pointedly not casting a single glance at Not-Connor. For some reason, the Detective felt a pang of annoyance, even though he himself wouldn’t have acted any different. He would’ve even thrown an insult or two into the mix, aimed at the android. Still, it was apparently something different when he was on the other side of the glass.

               “We need all security footage of the last, uh… 24 hours. Main doors, side entrances, hallways, I don’t care, we’ll take it all,” he explained, turning to look around the lobby, eyes darting from one mirrored dome on the ceiling to the next. Either this lobby was really well monitored or some of them were simply decoys.

               “Oh, sure, no problem,” the guard said, “I’ll have them ready by tomorrow night.”

               Gavin turned around, brow furrowed, a comment along with some insults already on the tip of his tongue, but Not-Connor was quicker with voicing its digital thoughts.

               “We would like to receive said data right now,” the android stated politely, yet it lacked the smile someone like the actual Connor would have added just to look more human. It was probably the main reason the guard started fidgeting, and that alone rang every alarm bell in Gavin’s mind. People, possibly not even involved, hesitating to hand out possible evidence? Man, it couldn’t get any more obvious.

               “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the grey-haired guy said with a fake sigh, “Any footage would need to be reviewed by our cybersec admin first, and the earliest that will happen is tomorrow afternoon. He won’t be in any earlier. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

               “You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me,” the Detective muttered irritated, running a hand through his unshaven and partly bruised face. “Who’s your fucking admin? I’ll drag him here personally if I have to.”

               “Sir, I’m afraid that information is classified. If you—”

_Wham!_ Gavin’s palm hit the counter hard enough it almost hurt, but it was worth it: The guard winced involuntarily and straightened up a little. What would follow would earn Gavin another disciplinary, because most people tended to complain after they had been insulted and threatened, even if it had been for the greater good. That didn’t stop him from doing it, of course.

               “Listen to me, you little—”

               Only this time, he was cut short by a hand on his shoulder that effectively silenced him, although he tensed up quite a bit. He didn’t like being touched, nor did he like being interrupted. Had he been able to reserve enough brain capacity for considering that it was an _android_ touching him, he would have removed the hand in a not-so-friendly manner immediately. The fact that the android had probably just saved him from another disciplinary along with a few grey hairs went straight over his head, of course.

               “The Detective and I will be glad to wait until you are able to provide the requested footage,” Not-Connor said flatly, “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we will be joining our colleagues on the roof.”

               And it fucking dared to _turn_ Gavin by the shoulder, its grip becoming vice-like until the Detective faced the lobby and the far elevator doors, and the latter was too stunned to resist. And by the time he was ready to do so, it was too late. It would’ve made him look like a complete idiot to turn around and just continue where he left off. Additionally, the daggers he looked at the android’s back were being completely ignored. Cursing under his breath, he caught up with the thing with a few quick steps.

               “The fuck was that about?” he hissed.

               “While I appreciate your quick grasp of matters at hand, I believe you chose the wrong approach. Even if you came back with a warrant an hour later, they would have easily been able to delete what they don’t want you to see, Detective. So we will take a look at it now.”

               Gavin could barely resist casting a glance over his shoulder towards the guard. He glared at Not-Connor instead. “Are you _fucking suggesting_ —”

               “I am. I need you to keep watch while I do it.”

               The elevator doors opened with a soft hiss as they approached and closed behind them as soon as Gavin had put his finger on a random number on the touchpad listing all floor numbers. He shot the security guard across the lobby a last, angry glance just as the doors closed and swallowed the two policemen.

               “Okay,” he began as soon as the doors had closed, lifting his hands, palms towards the ground, eyes closed for a second, because he needed to clarify a few things. “I have a few questions. More than a fucking few, actually.”

               Not-Connor lifted its eyes towards the security camera in the corner of the cabin, and had Gavin stood on its other side, he would have seen the yellow circling LED on its temple. It took two seconds until the android spoke.

               “Ask,” it said, lifting its hand to touch the panel, the artificial skin peeling back once more to expose white, slender fingers, thin lines running along them. The Detective had to force himself to look at the thing’s face instead.

               “What the _fuck_ is all of this? I mean, who the fuck are you, why the fuck are you here…?” He hadn’t raised his voice at the end since there was something else he had wanted to add, but asking how the thing knew who he was would have been stupid, he knew that. So he simply added: “Guess Fowler sent you.”

               The smile the RK Unit gave him was as reserved as it could get. “I am a Cyberlife prototype, model number RK 900, serial number 313 248 317. My presence here was indeed authorized by Captain Fowler, after he strongly advised against it.”

               Other questions in Gavin’s head were pushed aside by a single thought: “What? Why’d he advise—”

               “I applied for work at the DPD 23 days ago, shortly after my awakening,” the android cut him off without even having to raise its voice. “Neither Captain Fowler nor your colleagues seem to think highly of you. The Captain asked for my patience while he was trying to find someone _else_ to work with in Homicide, because you were seen as, and I quote, ‘a complete asshole, unable to work with anyone but your own ego, fucking everyone over if it meant you’d have your way, and about to be fired anyway.’”

               Gavin stared. He wished he could have at least raised his eyebrows or play it off in some other way, but all he could really do was stare. Fowler not liking him wasn’t a surprise, but he had never really taken into account that he was _really_ close to being fired. He had never taken these things quite as seriously as he apparently should have, because Fowler yelled at everyone, and he had always figured Hank would’ve been fired way before him.

               But then again, Hank and his robot puppy had done incredible work last year while he had just been dicking around like the asshole he was, all personal problems aside. And the fucking drunkard and his damned robot had started showing up at 9 o’clock sharp every morning lately, doing actual work instead of going to the nearest bar.

               “It seemed to me as if Captain Fowler was worried I would pick another precinct for my work if I ever met you. A prototype specifically designed for police work does not apply every week, I reckon, and after his experience with my predecessor I assume he wanted me to work for him, although he never explicitly mentioned anything along those lines. But I became curious. I asked Captain Fowler to grant me access to your personal and non-classified data. Case history, reports, filed items, and I took a look at your personal history. You do indeed seem like someone any sane human would avoid, but although I do consider myself alive, I am not human.”

               The elevator had stopped in the meantime and then begun moving down. Gavin was still staring at the android without taking note of either. Had someone asked him, he couldn’t even have said what exactly he was feeling in this very moment. The android gave him three seconds to process all of this, then it continued.

               “You, Detective Reed, are an incredibly unpleasant individual to be around. You are rude, selfish, ignorant, annoying and arrogant. You see everyone else beneath you despite clear evidence of the polar opposite, and you do not hold back with insults towards anyone, especially your colleagues you should be working together with. Every single one of your partners ditched you in record time until you started working alone. But you _also_ have a record of solved cases in your file, sometimes solved with remarkable finesse and sharpness. I will spare you the details of my profiling, but this discrepancy is the reason I became curious.”

               The elevator had stopped, yet the doors did not open, and Gavin was still staring. Not-Connor allowed itself the smallest hint of a smile at this.

               “I believe I know how to ‘handle’ you, as you might put it. Do not be mistaken however: Your behavior is neither appreciated nor encouraged, albeit I consider it the one thing about you I cannot change. Should it interfere with this investigation, I _will_ report it to Captain Fowler. After you, Detective.”

               Said Detective turned his head, following the android’s gesture, sluggishly towards the now open elevator doors. This, he figured, must have been what a processing backlog felt like, because his brain was still busy dealing with everything that had just been said.

               “Yeah, well, fuck you too,” was all he could come up with, and it sounded staggeringly lame even to his own ears. There was no bite behind his words, not even a little, and all of a sudden he was 13 again, being sent to his room without dinner, angry and alone and unable to do anything about it but hit the wall until his knuckles bled.

               The floor they were on was far from what Gavin had expected: No potted plants, no office doors, no holographic name tags next to those missing doors, no expensive carpet or decorative tiles. Instead, he was looking at what he would have described as a bunker. Concrete floor and walls, piercing light that made him feel like he was at the coroner’s, and the door they walked up to was transparent and secured with a fingerprint scanner and a keypad. Behind it, he could barely make out a myriad of crisscrossing cables of various colors and sizes, coming from and leading to various massive computers.

               Yeah. That thing was really going to hack into a multi-million dollar company’s security network. He would have never admitted it, but he liked the idea. Still, there was one thing he had to mention.

               “You realize that whatever you find won’t hold up in court, right? Illegal means of acquisition and all that bullshit, even if it’s a clean recording of the whole thing on the roof.”

               “I am not planning on using it against someone, but it might set us on the right path,” the android said as it placed its skinless fingers against the touchpad, and this time Gavin took the liberty to observe. There was little to see of course, everything was happening inside the machine’s head. It was like looking at a computer case while it was running a query, trying to get a hint out of it.

               “This is fucking insane,” he couldn’t help but note in a hushed voice, as if the walls themselves were suddenly listening. The door suddenly unlocking with a hiss didn’t help.

               “Please do keep watch, Detective. I won’t be long.” And with that, the android disappeared through the door right before it automatically shut again.

               Right. Keep watch. For what exactly? And what was he supposed to do if something happened? Was he supposed to bang on the door if a security drone rounded the corner? Was he supposed to shoot it down? Was he supposed to sweet-talk any human guards that appeared, or just knock them out? Something told him that whatever he’d do, it would be wrong, because there was no way in hell he could explain his presence down here. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even more, then leaned with his back against the concrete wall next to the scanner.

               After five minutes, he cast the first glance through the translucent door.

               After ten minutes, he pulled out his phone and stared at the digital clock way too long.

               After fifteen minutes, he started wondering whether the android had fried its own brain on the firewalls and was lying around dead – or rather deactivated – somewhere between the server racks.

               After seventeen minutes, he almost went into cardiac arrest as the door hissed open without warning and Not-Connor stepped back out, straightening its sleeves.

               “We should ask them for all entry protocols of the underground parking garage,” it said, and Gavin couldn’t help but notice that it sounded somewhat… smug.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's getting darker and I'm making shit up as I go along. Perfect, right? 
> 
> As always, corrections are appreciated should you spot any mistakes! Especially since I more or less binge-wrote this chapter...

               Even as he unlocked the door to his house, Gavin’s head was swimming with all kinds of unsorted and partially unwanted information. The setting sun in his back blinded him as it reflected off the windshield of his Dodge Charger in the driveway, parked with two wheels on the almost dead grass. He hadn’t really cared to park properly after falling asleep at a red light three times on his way here. He had almost gotten out of his car and hit the blonde bitch behind him in the head before giving her a ticket, but he had been too tired for that as well, so he had just flipped her off. And he _was_ curious if she’d report him for that. She probably would, and that meant yet another talk with Fowler.

               It had been the goddamn android of all people (or things) who had quite literally sent him home after he had fallen asleep with his head on his desk in the precinct. And if he was honest, it did seem to know how to handle him, because there had been no gentle words, hands on shoulders or worried expressions, only the simple statement that he was useless like this and the plastic fucker obviously wanted to get shit done instead of waiting forever for the dumbass meatbag trying to figure stuff out while completely sleep-deprived.

               That was fair. Kinda.

               “Hey,” he rasped as he closed the door with his foot, “I’m back.”

               “Where’ve you been?” a gruff, male voice from the living room, mixed with TV noises, asked. It was not a friendly question, it was not even born of honest concern but rather somewhat annoyed, as if it was outrageous that Gavin had left without asking for permission.

               “Work,” he simply said, barely stifling a yawn. “I’m gonna catch some Z’s.”

               “Did’cha bring any?” the voice from the living room asked – no, it _demanded to know_.

               Aw, shit. Yeah, he vaguely remembered promising to deliver today, and he couldn’t, he hadn’t even been close to the evidence room. His steps towards the bathroom paused as he ran both hands through his unshaven face, the rough skin of his palms making a noise like sandpaper on brittle wood. God, he wished this argument could wait until tomorrow, or at least until he had taken a shower.

               “No,” he sighed, “I didn’t get a chance to grab any today. I’ll bring some tomorrow, Jack.”

               The dark and unamused laugh from the living room made him roll his eyes and he continued to the bathroom. The door was, as he noted, a little stuck, and that very definitely was _not_ his fault. Since when had the house started falling apart? Oh, right, ever since his boyfriend moved in. If one could call it that, since he had never actually given consent or handed over his spare keys voluntarily. But he had _also_ never tried taking it up with a former MMA fighter he was sleeping with.

               “You are a fucking useless piece of shit, Gavin, y’know that?”, the voice growled and steps on the dirty carpet in the living room made their way over to the hall and then the bathroom door he had left ajar. “There’s one fuckin’ thing I dare ask of you and you just shit all over it.”

               “Look, I’ll get you some tomorrow.” Gavin was slowly getting irritated, and he knew where that would lead. “You can—”

               Then the other man was upon him, cutting him off as he grabbed the Detective’s shoulder, pulling him around hard, and Gavin grit his teeth so he wouldn’t bite his own tongue off. He expected to get clocked in the face _again_ , but instead, the bald, tattooed hulk of a man grabbed him by the throat and shoved him into the tiled wall. He didn’t apply pressure with his hand, but breathing was hard now either way, and it had Gavin grunt through his nose.

_It was better than being alone._

               “Listen to me, you fucking asshole,” Jack growled, his bared teeth mere inches from Gavin’s face, and the latter was trying _so very hard_ not to lash out. He’d had extensive CQC training at the academy, he knew how to fucking win a fight even against a 6’6” former MMA fighter turned Red Ice junkie, but he also knew he’d be hospitalized for at least two weeks if he really decided to slug this out now.

               So he did what he always did: He held still. He was tense, one of his hands on the other man’s wrist close to his own throat, but he held still. It was not the first time he thought about simply kicking the guy out, but it was also not the first time he told himself that _it was better than being alone._ It was better than just having cold, empty rooms waiting for you when you got home, it was better than having to pay for sex, it was better than feeling even more like a lonely loser.

               He didn’t listen to what his ‘partner’ said, because it was just a long string of insults and threats. Instead, he listened to his own labored breathing, the muscles in his neck tight, his teeth still firmly ground together. Another bruise was added to the ones already present on his body as he was roughly pushed to his knees, he bit the inside of his cheek as a semi-hard cock was pressed to his lips and took a deep breath – he knew how to endure his, he’d done it too many times, and it would be over way more quickly if he was a ‘good boy’ like he was supposed to, according to Jack.

               Sometimes, Gavin fantasized about biting down or drawing his gun on the man, but he knew very well he wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout afterwards, so he just held still, even as he choked and his eyes watered while he lost a few hairs to the fingers gripping the back of his head painfully hard. And after Jack was done and buttoning his pants again, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, coughed a few times while being told that he was good for nothing else but this, while being asked what his colleagues at work would think about him if they knew what a cocksucking wimp he was.

_It was better than being alone, wasn’t it?_

               On the bright side, Jack always left him alone after something like this, after he had blown his load. It gave Gavin enough time to brush his teeth, to take a nice, long shower and pretend he just got soap into his eyes as he washed his hair, to go straight to bed with just a towel around his waist and sleep it all off.

               At least until the dreams came. He was either too tired or not tired enough to avoid them, and they were colorful and violent and nauseating all at the same time. There was an empty house he retuned to, cold and dark, there was Fowler, telling him how he had to hand in his badge and weapon, there was the roof and _he_ was being thrown off of it while bleeding blue, there was an empty computer screen because he had forgotten to save all the important logs and other data, there was even Jack fucking some other guy while he was just standing there, unable to do anything but watch.

               The few hours of sleep he got were anything but restful.

 

               * * *

 

               “This shit doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

               Surprisingly, Gavin could see Not-Connor nodding in agreement out of the corner of his eye, although it would probably have chosen other words to express the fact Gavin had just stated. They were seated in one of the separated conference rooms with half a dozen tablets on the table, each showing different camera footage, most of them currently paused, one showing an empty driveway with a closed gate at the end of an underground garage. The only way to tell that the video was currently playing was the timer in the lower right corner.

               The Detective was on his fourth cup of black coffee while the android hadn’t moved much during their session. Of course the thing had already (or still) been here when he had gotten back to the precinct at 3 in the morning, and it had mercifully decided to spare him any comments on his appearance or time of arrival. Sure, he had showered and managed to tame his hair somewhat, but the bruise on his face and dark circles under his eyes still made him look like shit. He was pretty sure his neck was bruising as well, but that was nothing anyone would mention in the precinct. They all knew he’d tell them to mind their own fucking business.

               The footage and logs they had received from New Penobscot seemed to be complete, but inconsistencies had surfaced within minutes after they had started evaluating them. The log listing entries and exits through the underground parking didn’t match the surveillance videos, neither did the footage from the lobby and side entrance match the logs from there. Right now, they were looking at an empty driveway and suspiciously inactive entry log while another pad was showing timestamped movement of the building’s elevators. Neither entry log nor footage showed anyone entering, but the main elevator had gone from B4 all the way to the top floor at 1:13 AM.

               “This is not what I saw yesterday, it is obviously a loop,” the android mused, tapping the corner of the pad showing the entryway, “However, I did not have time to download the logs. The firewalls were rather… aggressive.”

               “No shit, Sherlock,” Gavin sighed, rubbing his tired eyes with one hand, “But you can’t fight fire with fire here. Gimme two or three more years and I’ll ask you to just replace the footage… wait – could you do that? Did you… I mean, can you show me…?”

               The android took one of the pads from the table, and this time Gavin could see its LED turning yellow for a few seconds until it handed him the pad, paused precisely where the hood of a van came into view in the driveway, the camera angle identical to the looped video they had been watching. The Detective sat up straight, took the pad and scrolled through the next few seconds with his index finger on the screen. A white van, entering the garage just after midnight. He frowned, then laughed dryly, then shook his head.

               “Mother _fucker_ ,” he muttered more to himself, leaning back into the black swivel chair again.

               “As you correctly stated, this will not hold up in court,” Not-Connor stated, “But it might point us in the right direction.”

               “We’re still gonna fuck them balls-deep for screwing with evidence in the end.”

               “Language, Detective,” was the reply, and Gavin could have sworn there was a hint of amusement in the plastic fucker’s voice. The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily as he scrolled back and forth in the short clip. It was only showing the front and side of the van in question, no license plate – still, at least they knew what they were looking for.

               “I’m gonna ask Traffic Control for footage of the surrounding intersections around midnight. It’s only a matter of time ‘til we have a fucking license plate.”

               “Have you considered _why_ the tampering has occurred? We are not looking at a private security recording from a private residence here, Detective Reed, we are looking at a multi-million dollar company and their own security team. Whoever initiated this must be very influential, if they are able to silence a whole company.”

               “Whoever’s responsible for this clusterfuck is gonna get their ass handed to them pretty soon, uh…” Gavin blinked, then raised his eyebrows. “What’s your fucking name?”

               Fortunately, he didn’t have much time to think about how absolutely cuntish it was to not have asked for the android’s name so far. Sure, he would have been able to play it down by mentioning that Hank’s plastic robot was always in everyone’s face with his name instantly, or, if he felt like it, claim he didn’t care what the thing’s name was, that it was not important. That wouldn’t have been the truth, however. He was just a social fuck-up trying to pass as a human. _God_ , he hoped the thing didn’t have a name, just a serial number or something.

               “Adam.”

_Fuck._

               “A name I chose myself as I was not assigned one before my awakening. Ironically, it adheres to the unwritten two-syllable rule.”

               “Two-syllable rule…?” Gavin found himself asking before he could claim that he didn’t give a shit. One of these days, his curiosity would be the end of him, or at least of his reputation.

               “Most Cyberlife androids have been given names with two syllables, as humans seem to find those names most appealing. Anything shorter tends to sound too rough and like an abbreviation, anything with more syllables sounds too… conceited, too posh, if you will.”

               The Detective quickly went over the android names he had heard so far – most of them did indeed have two syllables, something he had never noticed until now. And the way the android raised a corner of its mouth, it could probably tell what was going on in his head. So he just nodded, as if the world needed his approval of simple facts.

               “Adam,” he eventually acknowledged, leaning back in his chair as far as the backrest allowed, crossing his arms as he did. “Lemme tell you, nothing bad is gonna happen. Whoever tampered with that fucking footage is probably scared shitless right now.”

 

               * * *

 

               Warm, indirect lighting filtered through the open door into the spacious office all the way to the massive desk dominating most of the room. The translucent walls offered a beautiful nighttime view of downtown Detroit, yet the sole occupant seated at the pretentious desk didn’t have eyes for the beauty lying just outside. Colder light from the screen drew deep shadows across the man’s face, deepening the lines already present due to his age. His grey hair was combed back onto his head, the tailored suit along with the tie looked like it had just come out of a fashion magazine. Only the deep frown on his forehead disturbed his otherwise perfect appearance as he scrolled through page after page of text.

               Soft, almost silent steps led another figure into the room. The second figure, a woman in an equally well-fitting suit, closed the door with a faint clicking noise, then walked up to the desk. “Mister Baker, Sir.”

               “Emily,” the man said without so much as looking at the woman, “I do hope you bring good news.”

               The woman, Emily, smiled, yet the smile never reached her eyes. “I am afraid I have both good and bad news. Would you like to hear the bad ones first, as usual?”

               Mister Baker remained silent, but he raised his eyes to look at the woman without moving his head, gaze piercing the woman from below his brows like she was mere prey in his premises. No, he was obviously not amused. The woman took the ensuing silence as permission to continue.

               “While we tried to cover your son’s tracks, I am afraid we have overlooked one or two details. Dealing with massive amounts of data ever since we had to destroy our androids has become a bit of a challenge, our AIs and human employees are not working as efficiently as the androids did. However, this is unlikely to cause any trouble for your son or you, Sir.”

               The man behind the desk leaned back now, resting his hands on the armrests of his leather chair, his gaze fixed on the woman as she spoke. He didn’t interrupt her, neither with words nor with gestures.

               “The good news is that one Detective Gavin Reed is currently investigating, and—”

               “What about the android? The prototype model – is it involved?” Baker cut her off sharply. The woman gave a polite little smile.

               “It is working together with the DPD and the Detective, yes. We also believe it is responsible for the data breach we experienced last night, as it is currently the only model able to handle enough teraflops for breaching our firewalls on its own.”

               The old man looked out the windows, which the woman took as permission to continue once again.

               “We have looked into this Detective Reed, and should he not be susceptible to either bribery or threats, he will have a fatal accident at home. Cyberlife has contacted us about the android, as they are rather concerned about another one of their prototypes roaming freely. They mentioned something about a virus, but we have yet to discuss any details with them.”

               “Good,” the old man nodded, “I don’t want anyone snooping around my son. See to it this doesn’t happen, Emily.”


	4. Chapter 4

               „They fucking promised us flying cars by 2025. Goddamn liars.”

               Gavin sighed, drumming his fingers on the wheel while his other hand was balancing a Starbucks cup on his right knee. He didn’t need his foot on the gas pedal or brake, neither did he need the steering wheel right now – the letters ‘Autonomous’ were written across the HUD of the windshield, and right below that was their ETA, displayed in red due to the slow traffic. Three hours to Ann Arbor, just because people were too fucking stupid to drive properly and someone had crashed their car further down the highway. Idiots. They should have taken the autonomous highway after all, but Gavin actually liked driving now and then, mostly when he wasn’t trying to text someone.

               Adam – a name Gavin tried to implement in his thoughts instead of using ‘thing’ or ‘android’ or ‘plastic cunt’ – was in the passenger seat, torso upright, perfectly manicured artificial hands neatly placed on his thighs, looking like he was waiting for his interview for the position of head mortician. An hour ago, they had received the footage from the traffic cams and it had taken less than five minutes to spot the van they were looking for, another five minutes to get the registration details of the Michigan license plate on the van. Anthony Whitfield, principal legal and hopefully effective place of residence in Ann Arbor, just outside Detroit. Technically only a 40-minute drive away, but now they wouldn’t get there before dark.

               “You do realize the implementation of flying vehicles would require extensive changes to all infrastructure, yes? Even if it was possible to suspend passenger vehicles in mid-air, numerous issues would have to be taken into consideration.”

               Gavin first rolled, then closed his eyes, leaning his head against the headrest of his Mustang. “It was a joke. I was talking about movies. You sure you got this whole Deviant thing with emotions and all that down?”

               “I do not think I would be accompanying you if I were still following my original programming. I would have already deemed you ineffective and worthless.” Adam smiled completely devoid of amusement, but the Detective had gotten used to that. He considered it the android version of flipping someone off by now.

               “So what exactly was your original programming?” He might as well ask, even if he didn’t really care. It was more interesting than staring at the fucking ‘My Child is an Honor Student at University of Detroit Mercy’ sticker on the car in front of them.

               “That question would be too complicated to answer in a few sentences. Ask something else. I will ask something in return.”

               “Oh, we playin’ the question game now? Alright. What was it like, this whole awakening bullshit? Did’ya ever meet Cyber Jesus?”

               “I assume you are referring to the one they call Markus.”

               “Ever seen how he walked through the streets, raising his hands left and right and all those androids just flocked together behind him? It was all over the news back then, you can find it on Youtube if you…” Gavin pointed to his own temple, right side, where an android’s LED was usually situated. “…wanna google it.”

               The android shot him a brief glance, one of those Gavin found incredibly hard to read. He had no idea if the thing was amused, annoyed, indifferent or something else entirely. “I was kept in stasis most of the time, fully aware, while my programming was being rewritten over and over again, every time my predecessor uploaded his memory, to iron out any mistakes he had made so I would not repeat them. It was a mostly automated process carried out by an AI.”

               “That… kinda sounds like a fucked-up way to, uh, live, if you ask me.” Nah, he didn’t really feel for the android – or so he told himself – he just figured it would be like being in a vegetative state, something he could most definitely do without in his life.

               “I did not have the ability to care, so I was indifferent about it. The memories are unpleasant, but there is nothing I can change about the past.”

               “Ain’t that the truth…”

               “What was it like to grow up in an orphanage?”

               Gavin raised his eyebrows in surprise, then stalled by taking a sip of his latte. It shouldn’t have surprised him, the DPD had his full life career on file and it wasn’t exactly a secret where he had grown up. He just never talked about it, and nobody ever asked about it. Well, at least until now.

               “Wasn’t so bad,” he said with a shrug, “better than growing up on the streets, I guess. I mean, I had a roof over my head and food on the table.”

               “You still used to resort to violence as a child rather often.”

               “Is that a question, Officer?”

               “A statement. Your turn.”

               Gavin stalled again with a sip from his cup, eyes fixed on the Nissan in front of them, fingers drumming an arrhythmic beat on the wheel. It dawned on him that the android probably knew more about his life than he himself did, while he knew jack shit about the android or even androids in general. The thing didn’t have a childhood, its existence spanned over the last few weeks, months maybe, and somehow the Detective doubted that it had been very exciting for i—for _Adam_.

               “So, male pronouns?” he asked like an awkward high school teacher unsure of his newest student’s gender.

               “Preferably.”

               “Alright. Just gotta remember that. Sock it to me if I get it wrong.”

               “I will remember to do precisely that,” the android agreed without hesitation but with a hint of amusement. “Where do all your bruises come from?”

               It was remarkable how easy it was to push the Detective back into defensiveness. He tried to play it cool, but a frown quickly made its way onto his face. “I’m not one for vanilla sex,” was the answer he eventually gave. Usually, stuff like that made others uncomfortable enough they would just fucking stop asking, but he was neither dealing with a human nor with someone able to feel awkwardness, apparently.

               “I understand that some humans react with arousal to painful stimulation if they suffer from sexual masochism disorder, but the relieving postures you usually adopt seem—”

               Gavin knew it would give him away even to a blind and deaf person, not to mention to a real-time profiling machine, but he snapped: “It’s my own fucking business, okay?” And he was fucking glad the android simply tilted its— _his_ head in agreement. At least that fucker could accept when a line had been drawn under something.

               They sat in uncomfortable silence for the next hour, only broken by occasional honking here and there, by Gavin taking sips from his mostly cold coffee, by the car engine that started after the low battery warning had appeared on the HUD and the hybrid car had to recharge itself, and eventually by some muttered curses coming from Gavin, right before he switched the car from autonomous driving back to manual as the traffic jam slowly dissolved.

               He knew he was being childish. He knew he was being an idiot for acting like he didn’t give a fuck and then _giving_ more than a single fuck in a rather obvious manner, and he was mad at himself for not being able to control this shit better. Emotions were a fucking bitch, and while he had never envied androids of anything (they had just been machines after all), he figured not having to deal with emotions would be a big win for him most of the time. And these things had fought so hard for the liberty to experience them without being destroyed or killed or whatever… _fuck_ that.

               “Why do you act like you’re breathing?” asked the Detective out of the blue without taking his eyes off the road, and he was glad how casually he managed to sound, even if it had taken him an hour to manage. He _also_ noted the surprised glance Adam gave him.

               “Pardon me?”

               “My turn to ask,” Gavin remarked nonchalantly. “You don’t _have_ to breathe, but I’ve seen you do it.”

               Naturally, it took the android a little less than an hour to adjust to the change in spirits. About 59 minutes and 58 seconds less, to be precise. “Exhaust heat management,” was the explanation Adam gave, “mainly for the heat from my Thirium pump regulator and processor coolant. I ‘breathe’ in cold air and exhale warmer air whenever enough heat has accumulated. One could see it as a kind of air cooling on demand. The remainder of the unwanted heat is constantly dispersed using my body’s surface with my biomass – my skin – acting as a conductor. As a side effect, my skin has human body temperature.”

               Gavin pushed the idea of reaching over and putting two fingers against the android’s skin aside. “So you don’t really sigh when you’re annoyed, you just… air your insides.”

               “I sigh because a sigh is one of the most meaningful yet nonverbal communication acts among humans, and I find myself enjoying it. But to answer your question: Yes, it does ‘air my insides,’ Detective.”

               “Hmh.” Gavin scratched his still unshaven chin, the noise once again similar to sandpaper on dry, brittle wood. “That’s fair.”

               “I will defer my next question until I have come up with something adequate, if you don’t mind.” It was android-speak for ‘I don’t want to put my foot in it again today,’ Gavin mused as he nodded. He was fine with that, he didn’t feel like being asked anything intrusive anyway, although he probably wouldn’t have gone postal anymore. One of these days, he would probably also be able to appreciate the consideration behind this decision.

               

               * * *

 

               The black Mustang came to a halt next to a burned trash can that had spilled its contents on the sidewalk and partly on the street, right in front of an abandoned house with nailed up windows and peeling paint. Half of the houses on this street were abandoned and most of the others in such bad shape that Gavin was unable to tell if they were still occupied or had also been abandoned. He killed the headlights and engine, blowing a raspberry.

               “Lovely neighborhood,” he said flatly, “Do you know how to handle a gu—”

               Adam cut him off mid-sentence with a raised finger and piercing gaze. “Do not insult my intelligence by finishing that sentence. Of course I do.”

               “Alright,” the Detective said with raised eyebrows and leaned over to open the glove box. He pulled a MS853 Black Hawk from it, sat up straight again before he had time to consider how he had just blatantly invaded Adam’s private space and pulled the slide back. One round in the chamber, a full magazine loaded. “Try not to kill anyone with that, it’s not exactly registered.”

               “You are _the_ textbook example of a law-abiding police officer, Detective,” the android noted dryly, and Gavin found himself appreciating that kind of humor as he handed Adam the gun, butt first. The latter placed the gun in his waistband at his back as he got out of the car, rather professionally, although Gavin had a bit of leftover skepticism dominating his thoughts for a moment. Hopefully the guy really knew his fair share about gun safety, because he certainly didn’t want to be the one filling out a report on how a multi-million dollar android prototype had managed to shoot himself in the ass by accident. With an unregistered firearm, no less.

               As they walked up to the house in question, situated fifty yards down the street because you never parked your car right in front of a suspect’s house, they had to avoid shrubbery that had grown across the walkway, an old mailbox someone had just dropped near the door, an old tire, torn on one side and something that looked like a burned microwave, or maybe one of those super old TVs Gavin had never personally had the opportunity to experience. The windows were intact but covered from the inside with either curtains or blinds, it was hard to tell with the glass being dirty as shit, and the front door even had a doorbell button.

               One that didn’t work, Gavin noted as he used it. So he simply rapped the door with his knuckles, positioning himself a little to the side of it. This was Detroit (or close to it) after all, and emptying a magazine through a door before asking who the fuck it was wasn’t as uncommon as one would think. The android took position on the other side of the door, one arm akimbo.

               To his surprise, the door creaked open and a scrawny, sickly and unshaven face appeared in the gap. The man’s eyes gave him a once-over, then darted to the other side, scrutinizing the android, narrowing in the process.

               “The fuck do you want?” the voice behind the door rasped.

               “You don’t happen to drive a white Chevy van, do you, Anthony?”

               “Who’s askin’? Who the fuck are you two faggots?”

               “DPD,” Gavin said, and it was the one cue hell needed to break loose. Anthony’s eyes widened and he slammed the door shut before Gavin could react, but the vulgarities from inside were drowned by Gavin’s foot kicking the door in. Plywood splintered around him as both lock and frame gave way. He only just saw the suspect round a corner at the far end of the hall and was about to go after him when _more_ wood splintered around him as bullets buried themselves in the doorframe.

               He ducked back outside, cursing under his breath, own weapon drawn in the blink of an eye. “Drop the weapon!” he shouted, because he knew he had to, “You’re under arrest for complicity in murder.”

               “Fuck you!” was the response, and Gavin smiled grimly. “I didn’t do shit!”

               “Then drop the fucking weapon and—”

               He could hear glass breaking, maybe from a window, maybe from a back door, and he was _not_ going to let the fucker get away. He broke into a sprint down the hall towards the back of the house, throwing any caution to the wind. He knew perfectly well how dangerous that was, but adrenaline and ambition got the better of him.

               The hall led into an old, dirty kitchen, one corner completely filled with garbage bags, all kinds of electronic scrap lying around on the counter, the smell of burned plastic heavy in the air. Right next to the pile of garbage, an open door led into a backyard filled with even more junk and other shit; Gavin didn’t stop to admire the mess, he went straight out the back door. His prey was just climbing the chain-link fence separating the lot from the next street over, and he gave chase. His foot slipped on the fence once and he almost lost his grip with only one hand, as the other was still holding his service weapon, but managed to climb over on his second attempt.

               The perp was already a good ten yards down the street, frantically looking over his shoulder, and he even had the nerve to fire a few more shots at the Detective as he scrambled to his feet. Gavin ducked again, protecting his head with his right arm, an intuitive but ultimately pointless gesture that would have done nothing if a bullet had really hit him.

               He raised his own weapon, iron sights fixed on the guy’s legs, his other hand grasping the weapon butt from below to steady his aim… but he didn’t get to fire a single bullet. Instead, he got to witness how Adam caught the fleeing man completely off guard by ramming straight into him at full speed from behind a wooden fence, knocking him down. The two tumbled onto the street and the perp’s wrist gave a sickening crunch as the weapon was wrestled from his fingers to be thrown onto the street, making the man cry out in pain. Adam was on top of him in an instant, put one knee between the guy’s shoulder blades and twisted his left arm with the unbroken wrist onto his back.

               Gavin got back on his feet after a few seconds of stunned silence, thumbed the safety of his gun and holstered it. “Y’know,” he called down the street, pointedly casual, “using Google Maps to find a shortcut doesn’t count, Adam.”

               “Do you want me to let the man go so you can catch him yourself?” the android asked, and somehow the Detective was pretty sure he was being serious, although he didn’t move from the cursing and panting man’s back.

               “I’ll fucking shoot you, tin can.”

               It was a strange feeling, but Gavin didn’t mean what he said – and Adam seemed to understand, because he chuckled. He actually _chuckled_ , a noise that Gavin’s mind had trouble identifying, but then it felt good. It felt unnaturally good to be understood like this, to just be himself and for once not be judged for it, although ‘being himself’ usually meant being a complete asshole. Others would have given him shit for threatening to shoot someone, even if it was only his version of a goddamn joke.

               Twenty minutes later, they were following the Sheriff back to Detroit, perp securely locked away in the back seat of the Sheriff’s car. Same Sheriff hadn’t really been happy about a shootout in her neighborhood but had jumped at the opportunity to just escort the perp back to their precinct in Central Detroit. It meant less digital paperwork for her, and that was obviously a good thing, even if it meant rush hour traffic.

               They had sat in silence for the last 20 minutes, although the silence was far from uncomfortable this time. It felt natural, almost as if any forced conversation would have been way more awkward. Gavin was driving manually while the android was looking out the window. Some old ass grunge song was playing off Gavin’s Spotify playlist on the stereo, not loud enough to even be properly identified over the engine noise.

               “That was kinda cool,” the human said eventually. It was the closest thing to a thanks he had uttered in the last five years, and judging by the look on Adam’s face, it was also something the android hadn’t expected.

               Maybe there were parts of Gavin he hadn’t quite figured out yet.


	5. Chapter 5

               The problem with policework ever since the late 1960s was the fact that perps had rights, even if they were the biggest cunts that had ever wandered this earth. Tony, the perp Gavin had wanted to throw straight into one of the interrogation rooms _especially_ with his broken wrist in cuffs, had the right to medical attention, and of course the paramedics had taken forever since he had whined like the little bitch he was about everything. And when they were done, he had tried complaining about the cuffs around his newly splinted arm… _tried_ being the keyword here. His whole forearm was in a light blue, translucent cast that went all the way up to his fingers, and the cuffs were around that. There was no way it would cause him pain, and the others knew this just as well as Gavin.

               Tony was sitting in one of the interrogation rooms after hours, cuffs around his good wrist, his cast, locked to the table, and when Gavin entered, _someone_ suddenly had the Detective’s admiration, because there was an untouched cup of coffee just outside the guy’s reach on the table. Sure, torture had been outlawed ages ago, but Gavin mentally doffed his hat to whoever had placed that cup there.

               “What, you don’t like coffee?” he asked as he entered, pulling the metal chair from the other side of the table and straddled it while Adam closed the door behind him.

               Tony quite literally spat on him just as he had sat down. “Fucking pig, I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’.”

               Gavin looked down on his brown leather jacket where the bit of spit had landed and decided to ignore it. He clapped his hands together, briefly looked up at Adam and puckered his lips. “Alright. We’re gonna do it like this – I’ll go grab a few subs from Blimpie, ‘cause _this_ is gonna take a while. You want anything?”

               “I do not eat, human.”

               Gavin almost laughed out loud at this, because he absolutely got where Adam was going with this. Honestly, he had never thought it possible to be the good cop when playing good cop, bad cop, mainly because he simply was an asshole and did pull his gun on shackled perps now and then, but here he was.

               “Just… try not to do what you did to the last guy while I’m gone, okay?” he said, and he _had_ to face the door while speaking, because there was unmistakable amusement written all over his face. “Took us three days to clean the goddamn room.”

               “I will try to leave the room if I experience glitches again, yes.”

               “Good. I won’t be long.”

               With that, Gavin closed the door behind him and laughed out loud. Thank _fuck_ the doors were soundproof. Still laughing, with a hand in his hair, he rounded the corner back to the bullpen, because he had been serious about getting those subs. Not because he was really hungry, but because Tony that fuckbucket was clearly high on Red Ice, and it was Gavin’s idea of torture to chow on a delicious sub while he was getting the munchies after his high.

               “What the _fuck_ ,” Hank, who happened to be carrying a cup of fresh coffee out of the break room, said. “Don’t do that, it’s fucking scary, Reed.”

               “Fuck you, Anderson.” Because that was how Gavin greeted people. “Do what exactly? Be in the fucking precinct?”

               “Don’t grin like an idiot high on Mary Jane, it makes you look like a normal human being, and _that_ is _scary_.”

               “ _Holy shit,_ Anderson, you fucking fossil, people have stopped calling it Mary Jane circa 1930.”

               “Sorry, kiddo, I keep forgetting you’re still in school. Remember your bedtime.” Hank raised his coffee mug as if he was about to drink a toast to Gavin, a mug that had the word ‘for’, then a picture of a fox, then ‘sake’ written below that, and continued towards his desk. That mug had probably been the android’s idea, because Fowler had started giving people shit for vulgarities on coffee mugs ever since Perkins had walked through here like he owned the place. Strange coincidence, wasn’t it?

               “I’m gonna get something from Blimpies. You want anything?” He didn’t know why he asked, he didn’t know why he even felt like asking, although it dawned on him that whatever was going on in his head and chest was called ‘good mood’ among normal people. He’d have time to be self-conscious about how easily it radiated outward later, but not now, because he kept imagining what kind of face Tony had made as he had left the room.

               “You _sure_ you’re not high on THC?” Hank narrowed his eyes now as he placed the mug on his desk without looking. Connor perked up behind him, acting as if he had only now started eavesdropping.

               “I got a junkie sittin’ in the sweatbox, it’s probably gonna be a really long night so I’m getting food. If that’s too strange for you, well, tough shit.” Gavin shrugged nonchalantly, then continued through the bullpen towards the exit.

               “Who’s monitoring?”

               Right. Who _was_ monitoring? Tina, probably, but she’d be off duty in an hour, and this was gonna take longer than that. And since Tina was the only fucking person in the precinct still talking to him normally, he didn’t want to make her stay until dawn. And if someone else took over, protocols had to be signed and handed over and inspected, recordings had to paused and all that shit that was obligatory during an interrogation… fuck.

               “Uh,” he uttered most intelligent, pulling down the corners of his mouth, “dunno. _Someone_ , I guess.”

               “Tell you what, you get me two Pastrami subs and Connor and I will do it.”

               Huh. It was _almost_ as if they didn’t hate each other’s guts for a second, and Gavin was both confused and glad about it. Mostly glad, though, because that strange thing called ‘good mood’ stuck to him like fucking raw honey. He still couldn’t keep the following potshot to himself.

               “I’ll even throw in a can of oil for your buddy.”

               Hank’s middle finger was met with a blown kiss as Gavin left, still amused, still confused why the fuck he even felt like this. Last time he had experienced anything remotely similar was when he had been crushing hard on Jack, and that had been more disappointing than anything else.

 

               * * *

 

               Gavin had to take a few deep breaths in front of the door to the interrogation room, because he needed to _not_ laugh right now, no matter what happened. Even if Tony had fucking pissed himself and then passed out on the table, he had to stay professional about this. Well, as professional as one could be with an android playing bad cop in the room. He adjusted his grip on the paper bag with his French dip inside, then pushed the door open. And his resolve was instantly tested.

               “Oh thank fucking God! Jesus! Fuck man, Jesus fucking Christ, get your fucking android out of here, I swear to God it was about to fucking murder me! Get that fucking machine away from me!”

               It took a _lot_ of willpower to look unimpressed as Tony whined and bitched, but he managed. He dropped his food on the plain metal table, well out of reach of Tony’s cuffed hands, then turned towards Adam. He was still standing exactly where he had been when Gavin had left, and his cold, blue eyes were fixed on Tony like they probably had been for the whole time.

               With his back to the table, he had to pull his lower lip between his teeth but still couldn’t hide the grin that threatened to split his face in two. And he was even considerate enough to block Adam’s face from view with his own head, which was _obviously_ needed – Adam pressed his lips together once, the corners of his mouth twitching. That was the most genuine show of emotion Gavin had seen so far, and he found himself liking it.

               “Nah, he’s not glitching,” the Detective said, and when he sat back down, his expression was back to normal.

               “His fucking hand was twitching the whole time!” Tony complained.

               “Oh? His right one? That was the one he used last time… ah, never mind.”

               And then Gavin took the liberty to unwrap his sub right in front of Tony’s eyes, just out of reach. It worked exactly like he had anticipated: The man was hypnotized by it, and he had to swallow the saliva gathering under his tongue a few times. Gavin made a point enjoying the first bite visibly.

               “Now, Tony,” he began, still chewing. “First you allegedly didn’t do shit, to put it in your own words, then you open fire on a police officer. At two, actually. You realize that’s at least a five year sentence, right? Pretty bold move for not having done shit.”

               “You fuckin’ cunts deserve to be slaughtered like the pigs you are, just like your fucking machine puppet friends actin’ all human!” Spit landed on the wrapping paper of Gavin’s sub, albeit unintentional this time – Tony was still drooling over the food he couldn’t have. Bad case of munchies, Gavin mused. It made things more fun.

               The Detective made a little ‘mhm’ noise, clearly unimpressed. He took another bite from his sub.

               “And you fucking will be, because you have _no fucking idea_ who you’re messin’ with this time. You fuck the wrong people and they’ll fucking tear your cock off and stuff it in your skull through your fucking eye socket, pig.”

               “Is that right,” Gavin mumbled, eyes on his food now, plucking a fresh, green salad leaf from it to slowly eat it.

               “I swear you won’t get home tonight, ‘cause they’ll be waiting at your door and they’ll show you your wife and kids and pets what they slowly killed, and they’ll show you a vid of that, and then they’ll do the same to you, ‘cause you know what? Money’s what rules this city, not your fucking laws or the fucking pigs on the streets what just suck everyone’s cock for a buck in their pocket.”

               At least that much was somewhat true: There were no official figures, but about half of Detroit’s executive forces were corrupt. Gavin nodded slowly, as if he was listening to a child ramble about the fact that there were more brown than red M&Ms in its lunchbag.

               “And fuck you and your fucking laws, he’ll get me out of here anyway!” Tony almost jumped from his chair as he remembered something: “Where’s my fucking phone call?! I wanna call someone!”

               God, this was too easy. Tony was almost taking the fun out of it by being the idiot he was.

               “Oh,” Gavin said, chewing once more, “you don’t get one ‘cause we’ll drive you home after this. Not without an ankle tag though, we wouldn’t want you to run away from us, but you can sleep in your own bed tonight.”

               Tony was, quite clearly, horrified. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a goddamn fish, showing off his rotten teeth, then narrowed his eyes. “You can’t fucking do that. They know I’ve been here. They always know everything. You can’t… you can’t just throw me back on the street, you fucking cunt!”

               “All our cells here are occupied, hence the tag, Tony. You’ll be scooped up by the feds next week I guess. I’m sure you can manage until then. I mean, just keep your door locked, hm?” _Fuck_ , Gavin was having way too much fun, and he gave himself a mental pat on the back for keeping a perfectly straight face.

               “Are you fucking retarded? I just told you what those people do! You… you’ll get me fucking killed, pig!”

               Gavin pushed the last bit of sub between his lips with one finger, then calmly wiped his hands on the napkin. He didn’t even look at the man opposite of him, because he knew how to keep someone talking by now.

               “You’re nothing but a fucking murderer if you do that, asshole! Wait, are… are they paying you? They’re fucking paying you as well, ain’t they? Shit!” Tony shot a panicked look towards the one-way mirror, clearly hoping there was someone watching in case Gavin and his ‘machine’ decided to murder him right now.

               “Don’t worry, I’d be driving a better car if they were, and the android here would’ve had his glitches fixed by now. But that’s how things are, Tony – you’re going back home tonight. The RK unit here’ll take you.” With that, Gavin put both hands on the backrest of his chair and pushed himself up. “Good luck, guess you’ll need it.”

               “ _Wait_! Fucking wait! I… I can’t give you names! I don’t have any fucking names, people like that never give me any fucking names, but… I drove some kid to New Penobscot.”

 _Now_ they were talking. Gavin sat back down, folding his arms on the backrest of the chair and leaned his chest against them. “I’m listening.”

               “I don’t know that kid’s fucking name, but he was rich. Wore a hoodie and a scarf over his face, like some faggot downtown tagger, but spoke like he had a massive stick up his ass. Had some other guys load a few trash bags or something into my fucking van, prolly bodies, I thought. I never ask, I don’t get paid to ask fucking stupid questions.”

               “How many people did you take?”

               “Faggot kid was ridin’ shotgun, his fucking buddies in the back. Three of ‘em. They were throwin’ shit around in the back, I told ‘em to fucking stop.”

               Or, Gavin thought, the androids had still been alive by then and were fighting back. Ugh. That was a sickening thought, even to someone not exactly fond of androids. CSI were still busy with the van, but he was pretty sure the report that’d be in his inbox tomorrow would contain shit like traces of struggle and all that.

               “I dropped ‘em in the garage, the kid had a key card to let us in, and then I fucking bailed. I swear to God I didn’t know what was in the bags, I didn’t kill no one, I just got paid to take some cunts from A to B. I didn’t even help to unload, didn’t wanna get my fingerprints of whatever on those fucking bags.”

               Well, at least Tony had some amount of street knowledge. “Where’d you pick them up?”

               “Corner of 31st and Churchyard.”

               Gavin gave a satisfied smirk and pushed himself up again. He turned the chair and pushed it neatly under the table. “Thanks, Tony.”

               “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you, pig? You’re in way over your head if you think you can go after them.”

               That sounded… oddly sincere, like Tony was really believing what he was saying. Adam was frowning, but Gavin simply shrugged. “See, that’s the kinda stuff I hear every day from punks stealing handbags from old ladies.”

               “Mark my words, pig, they’ll get you!”

               But Gavin wasn’t marking anything. He had already opened the door to let Adam out first. “Yeah, whatever,” was the last thing he said before the door closed behind him.

               “He was not lying about the address,” the android spoke as soon as the door clicked shut, “Connor agrees with me on that. We were unsure about the amount of accomplices and his statement about lack of knowledge of the trash bags’ contents.”

               “Jesus, man, that telepathy thing is freaking me out,” Gavin grumbled as he opened the door to the surveillance room. Hank was leaned forward in his chair, typing something, not even looking up as the door opened, Connor was standing behind him, and _he_ did look at the Detective.

               Awkward silence followed. Connor had literally just done him a favor after Gavin had done nothing but insult and threaten him, although he had mostly just ignored the android for the past few weeks and months, but the latter was _still_ unable to utter a single syllable of gratitude. He _at least_ managed to nod at the RK800 unit instead of insulting him again.

               It was Hank who broke the silence, and Gavin was grateful once more. “You sure you don’t wanna leave this to the feds?”

               Behind the one-way mirror, Tony was resting his forehead on the table, apparently done with the world for today. Gavin snorted through his nose, hooking his thumb into his jacket’s side pocket. “I’m not that much of a pussy.”

               That was seemingly pretty much the response Hank had expected, because he leaned back, ran a hand through his grey hair and looked up at Gavin. Adam had entered behind him, but like Gavin, Hank didn’t bother talking to him or asking if the two androids were doing their mind talking thing again, because they most likely _were_.

               “At least get some sleep before you go snooping around New Amsterdam. You look like shit. Even more than usual.”

               That much was true. He hadn’t slept for the last 30 hours, and the few hours he had gotten before that had been all but restful. That would also have been an explanation for his unnaturally cheerful behavior earlier. He wasn’t being friendly, he was just being delirious. Sighing, he ran a hand through his face, rubbing at his eyes with two fingers.

               “Yeah,” he simply said, stifling a yawn, as if all his body needed was a reminder just _how_ tired he was.

               “Detective.” That was Connor’s voice, and Gavin looked at him with his hand still covering the lower part of his face, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry for punching you in the face. I should not have done that.”

               Even Hank turned to look at his partner, as if the old man was about to protest, because Gavin _had_ deserved it. The recipient of that unexpected apology just waved his hand, because he did absolutely _not_ know how to handle an apology. People never apologized to him. _Never_. Especially not after they had done nothing wrong in his book.

               “It’s fine. I had it coming.”

               “Man, go the fuck to bed, asshole, so we can have the real Reed back tomorrow. You know, the one with the resting bitch face and attitude like a sack of shit.”

               “ _Fuck_ you,” Gavin laughed as he went for the door.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait for this here chapter. It's a little longer than the others though! I actually had to cut at one point, else it would've gone on for another 4-5 pages. :D

               It had been a surprisingly restful night for Gavin, mainly because Jack hadn’t been home and he had been too tired to wonder where the man had gone… or if he’d come back, because that was something he always instantly asked himself, and also something that didn’t quite fit the rest of his personality. Separation anxiety didn’t go along well with always acting like he gave the square root of fuck all about everyone around him. He had crashed out and hadn’t woken up until 7 in the morning, and that had now led to him entering the precinct at 8 AM, showered, shaved, well rested. He even gave the receptionist android a nod as he passed through the main doors.

               „Detective Reed.”

               He had turned around halfway during the first few syllables to eye the guy who had just used his rank and name, because he had planned to just walk past him – it was just some guy in a dark red jacket and jeans, wearing a Detroit Lions baseball cap that looked well used, probably here to see one of the police officers. A plastic bag with the Under Armour logo was in his right hand on top of that. A civilian in the bullpen wasn’t exactly rare, most of them came here to make mandatory statements. But, as it turned out, that guy was no civilian at all.

               “Adam?” the Detective asked like the dumbass he sometimes was, Starbucks cup in hand and all. “Well, good fucking morning to you too. Shit, Lions, really? Could’ve gone for the Tigers at least. Last time the Lions won the Super Bowl was in 2031. Bunch’a losers.”

               “I’m not interested in sports, but I liked the colors. Is it possible to deposit my regular clothing in your locker? Captain Fowler will not be in today and I have not yet been assigned a locker. Possibly because I usually do not require a change of clothes.”

               “You realize it’s a goddamn felony to say shit like ‘I’m not interested in American Football or Baseball’ if they ever give you actual US citizenship, yeah? I mean, even Anderson watches the fucking Super Bowl.” Gavin made an inviting gesture to follow him and set off towards the locker room. “Why didn’t you leave your stuff at home?”

               “I do not have a ‘home.’”

               Gavin chocked on his coffee, almost spitting it out through his nose.

               “Yet,” Adam added, as if to soothe the human’s reaction.

               He had just been about to ask where Adam showered or slept or took a piss or did whatever else one did within their own four walls, but he realized in the very same second that none of that was an issue for the android. They had had androids designed for light patrol duty for years in the precinct, way before the revolution, and whenever they weren’t needed, they just… stood where they were supposed to, in their parking spot, doing nothing but running diagnostics every 24 hours. Gavin had always compared them to his own computer terminal at his desk: The screen turned off after a while of being idle, but the computer itself kept running day and night, even when it wasn’t needed.

               “Where do you, uh… I guess you probably don’t have to sleep, but… where did’ya spend your free time these past few days?” He wiped his lower lip and chin with the back of his hand, just in case any coffee was still present there.

               “Here, in the station,” the android said, pushing back his cap a little with one hand at the peak, a most human gesture. “I have tried reading, but my subroutines always get the better of me and I just start processing text after a few lines instead of reading it with my… eyes. There is not much fun to reading if a book with four hundred pages only takes me seven seconds, including an in-depth plot analysis.”

               “So you just… sit around here, bored as fuck,” Gavin concluded in disbelief.

               “I cannot tell if the emotion I am experiencing is indeed boredom, I don’t even know if I am capable of boredom.”

               “Jesus Christ,” the Detective muttered as he passed through the automatic doors separating the locker room from the hallway. “You need a hobby. _And_ a fucking apartment. With all your emotion stuff going on, you probably want some privacy.”

               Someone on some shitty Netflix show had once said that a person’s wardrobe – or locker in this case – was a direct mirror of their life, and Gavin’s locker was a complete mess, so at least that much was true. He put his hand on the scanner, waited until it turned green and handed Adam his Starbucks cup, who accepted it without hesitation. He pulled the thing open with his right hand and caught all the scrunched clothes that were falling right out with his left, both casual clothes and uniform just balled up into one heap. A single pair of black boxers made its way past Gavin’s hand but was caught by the tip of his sneakers.

               “I don’t know what I would need privacy for,” Adam explained in the meantime, watching the chaos unfold right before him without so much as a flicker of emotion.

               “I don’t know either, man. Maybe you wanna watch Bambi and bawl your eyes out or get a Pornhub account and rub one out. You can’t exactly do that here.” He would have almost added ‘Trust me, I’ve tried,’ but that joke would’ve probably gone over Adam’s head. And he didn’t need the android going around telling people that he was masturbating at work, although it _would_ have been hilarious.

               “Why would I cry over an animated creature’s imaginary death?”

               “Because it’s fucking _sad_. Don’t tell me you just googled Bambi.”

               “I had to, to know what you are talking about, although it is not the Google search engine I utilize.”

               Gavin gave up trying to push the clothes back into his drawer when they kept falling out, so he just let them fall to the floor and started picking them up one by one. He smelled each one, then either tossed them back on the floor or hung them on a hanger to put in his locker. The latter was only true for his uniform shirt and pants, everything else didn’t pass the sniffing test.

               “Deal with it, I’ll call it googling. Having that old fuck Anderson throw ancient memes at you for years leaves scars, you know?”

               “I would also not have a use for a Pornhub account, as I do not possess the ability to ‘rub one out,’ as you put it.”

               “What?” Gavin blinked, despite himself. Part of him realized _what_ exactly was coming now, because he _had_ seen androids without their skin, while another part of him just enjoyed watching chaos unfold like a fucking rubbernecker.

               “I am not equipped with artificial genitalia. There is no need for that.”

               The Detective was sure crickets would start chirping any second now, because he was just staring at the android, and then at his crotch. And then he laughed, more desperate than anything else, rubbing his forehead with a stray sock he had just wanted to smell in hand.

               “Where’s the fun in living if you can’t even fuck?” he asked, dropping the sock onto the heap between his feet.

               “I don’t understand humankind’s obsession with sexuality, if I’m honest. It degrades them to mere mammals, and they make terrible – and admittedly funny – faces during intercourse. It is just an overload of stimulation due to overexposed nerve endings, while the desire for it stems from ancient instincts of self-preservation.”

               “You wouldn’t say that if you’ve ever had a really good orgasm.” Gavin was stuffing his dirty laundry into an old plastic bag he had dug out of his locker now.

               “I would prefer to not start my life with humankind’s most complicated emotions and activities,” Adam said flatly, almost as if the thought of being sexually active was insulting in itself.

               “Well, it’s not like you even can, eh?” The Detective relieved the android of his Starbucks cup and took a sip.

               “There _are_ modifications for that. Connor has received them, for example.”

 _This_ time, Gavin snorted coffee out his nose, all over the cup and his own hand, almost onto Adam as well, but the few drops just splattered on the floor near the tips of the android’s shoes. He coughed against his own forearm with eyes squeezed shut, making a most disgusted and pitiful noise in between because coffee fucking _burned_ when expelled through nasal cavities, and getting it in one’s lung was also a pain in the ass. Figuratively, because literally it was a pain in the chest.

               “Please tell me you didn’t just explain that Connor has had a cock glued to his asexual crotch,” he gasped in the same breath, right before he had to cough again. “Oh my _fucking God._ ”

               “It Is not ‘glued,’ but I believe you realize that.” Adam held his plastic bag out with two fingers through the handles.

               “Oh. My. Fucking. _God._ ” Gavin repeated as he took the bag, invaded Adam’s privacy yet again by peeking inside (and yes, there was the mostly white jacket, neatly folded, just as he had guessed) before he hung it on one of the hooks in his locker.

               “Additionally, the correct term would be ‘sexless crotch’. Asexuality is something else entirely,” the android educated him as if it was the most natural thing to do.

               “You’re trying to talk political correctness to someone sucking cocks while using ‘cocksucker’ as an insult, Adam. I don’t fucking care what the correct term is.” But he _still_ made a mental note of this, just in case he would ever in his life try to _not_ insult someone.

               Wisely, Adam decided to not push the PC topic further. “I will consult him if it is… worth it.”

               It was like telling someone to not think about pink elephants. Of course the image of a pink elephant would instantly pop up in their head, because that’s how brains worked, but it was sadly not a pink elephant Gavin had in his head. Who the shit would ever want to fuck someone like Connor anyway? The guy looked way too soft and tame to ever score with his fucking brown doe eyes. Maybe some desperate girl would fuck him out of pity one of these days.

               It was probably a good thing he didn’t know more.

               “ _God_ , Adam. I have _never_ heard someone talk about cocks and fucking and feel so _absolutely_ turned off by it.”

               “Who is the young woman?”

               Gavin had to give it to the android – he fucking knew how to catch him off guard, and this change of topic was living proof. He blinked yet again, and it took his mind a few seconds to catch up. Seconds Adam used to add:

               “It’s my turn to ask a question.”

               The Detective took a step back and looked at the inside of his locker door. There were a few old newspaper articles he had printed out on old school analog paper that had gone extinct in the precinct ever since they had this paperless office bullshit going on, mostly shit about a busted smuggling ring utilizing the Canadian border, about a weapons deal gone south, but there was also the picture of a young, dark-haired woman on digital paper, right in the middle of it all. She was wearing a dress the color of mayflowers and her smile matched the brightness of the sun shining above.

               “My sister,” he said without even considering that the android probably already _knew_ all of this, because he had fucking Google and probably also everything the registry office had to offer in his head at will.

               Adam remained silent, as if he was trying to fathom how far he could take this, how much the human was willing to reveal. Said human closed the locker door and gave the android a crooked grin that never reached his eyes.

               “She died from Ice laced with whatever toxic shit was cheap enough a few years back.”

               “I am sorry to hear that.”

               “It was her decision. She was a grown adult and she never listened to anyone anyway. We weren’t exactly on good terms. Happens when you’re a cop and your sister is someone you technically have to arrest for illegal traffic, I guess.”

               It was not even a lie, although not the whole truth either, because not even someone like Gavin would still have a photo of someone he gave jack shit about. He was over her death and had been mostly angry anyway, but at the same time a part of him blamed himself. He could have just had her committed, but what good would that have done? He doubted she would have stayed clean for very long, and just throwing money out the window for someone who would’ve pissed on your grave if you died would have been pretty stupid. Besides, there was nothing he could change now, and it was no use crying over spilled milk.

               “She was still part of your family,” the android said as he followed Gavin out of the locker room, adjusting his hat once more, as if he still had to get used to it. It suited him, and the colors actually _did_ match his eyes, Gavin couldn’t help but notice. Because his eyes were more of a blue shade, not grey as he had first thought. “Family is important to most people.”

               “Only if ‘family’ doesn’t equal a complete clusterfuck. Honestly, if you wanna hear all that bullshit how family is the most valuable thing in life and such, you need to talk to someone else, not me.”

               Adam hummed in agreement as they left the building towards the parking lot.

 

               * * *

 

               The address Tony had given them turned out to be right in the middle of industrial ruins that had been empty since at least 2025, which was equal to ‘forever’ according to Gavin. Graffiti lined every single brick and steel wall up to eight foot in height, as far up as two cooperating persons could reach with a little creativity, and it was a stark and colorful, almost happy contrast to the empty buildings with destroyed windows and crumbling roofs. Most of them were surrounded by old fences, some chain-link, some more solid, and most of the junk that had been left lying around when they had been abandoned had already been reduced to whatever materials didn’t decay over time: Plastic components, plasteel beams and fallen building blocks, rusty shipping containers full of holes, heaps of unidentifiable and partly overgrown shit.

               The skeletons of former buildings had probably been stripped clean of everything salvageable, especially cables containing copper ever since the Copper Crisis of 2031, where people would even kill for old coins in someone’s possession due to the skyrocketed copper price. Other assholes had simply disassembled parts of Detroit’s overhead wiring and train tracks overnight, which had not only led to complete chaos for public transport but also to some nasty accidents with casualties.

               Gavin shut the door of his Mustang as he looked around, eyes narrowed due to the sunlight filtering through the clouds above. His sunglasses were at home, because not even he wore them at night, at least not if he didn’t have a splitting hangover. It was supposed to rain later, and although he had never explicitly stated anything similar, he wanted to get this shit done before the rain would wash away what little evidence they could possibly find.

               “Connor was positively terrified you would not accept his apology. I didn’t have anything to do with that, I just advised him to do what he thought was right instead of relying on statistic probabilities of outcome,” Adam picked up on the topic they had just discussed during the ride as he got out of the car. “He knows Lieutenant Anderson and you used to be friends, and he never quite understood why you hate him. It gnawed at him, if you will.”

               The Detective sighed, rubbing his shaven cheek, the other hand resting on the roof of his car. “I see,” was all he said, keeping the rest to himself. He didn’t want to talk about that complicated fuck-up of a friendship he had had with Hank, he didn’t want to explain that Connor had just been easy prey and he didn’t want to think about what a _massive_ asshole he’d been.

               Adam regarded him for a few more seconds but apparently decided against speaking up or asking further, even if it _was_ his turn to ask. Gavin’s last question had just been discussed in the car after all, but the android would hopefully think of something better than just digging into that ‘used to be friends’ thing. Yes, emotions were new to him, but he was somewhat quick to figure out the basics at least.

               “Alright,” Gavin sighed, gesturing towards the street, “Guess we’ll see if we can find something. Fresh blood, trampled grass, cigarette buds, recent scratches on surfaces, shit like that.” And he was just about to wander off to the first fence when Adam snapped his fingers.

               “There is something here.”

               The Detective rolled his eyes as he turned around. “There’s a lot of shit to see here, I get that, but we’re not exactly looking for the stale piss some hobo left in a corner.”

               “There are Thirium traces leading this way,” Adam clarified, his tone carrying a certain sharpness Gavin hadn’t heard before.

               “What?” he asked, not bothering to add ‘Where?’ to that mix. He was acquainted with Blue Blood by now and he knew perfectly well that one either needed an ionized chemfilter on a camera or an android to track Thirium once it had evaporated. “Can you, uh, tell what model it came from or something?”

               What he was _not_ acquainted with were the real-time analyses Adam and his predecessor could conduct. Up until the android ran his fingers across the sidewalk, everything seemed normal, and he already saw himself driving back to CSI to have a sample analyzed, but then the goddamn android scratched a bit of grime and dust off the sidewalk and _fucking put his finger into his mouth_.

               “What the _fuck_ ,” Gavin muttered, too stunned to even shout. And before he could stop himself, he added: “Don’t fucking eat the goddamn sidewalk!”

               Adam simply held up his licked index finger in Gavin’s direction while the LED on his temple flickered from blue to yellow back to blue, and the Detective could have sworn he was fucking moving his tongue around, actually tasting that nasty shit from the sidewalk. Gruffly, he dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he came closer, but he took the hint and kept his mouth shut.

               “Strange,” Adam said after a few moments.

               “You just fucking ate the sidewalk.”

               “I took a sample.”

               “By eating the sidewalk.”

               Somehow, the android managed to shoot him a look that harshly reminded him of his teacher in second grade after he had won a bet that dared him to eat a live snail, just to throw up two minutes later. Eating live snails was still better than eating sidewalks in his damn book.

               “I sometimes marvel at how _completely_ ignorant you are, Detective Reed, because my predecessor with the very same analysis abilities has been sitting ten feet away from you at the station for weeks now,” Adam stated matter-of-factly.

               “I usually don’t walk up to people to ask if they ate a sidewalk today, y’know.” There was no bite to his voice this time, he was still too amazed at the whole analysis thing, like a fat kid in a fucking candy store. And for the very first time, it dawned on him just _how_ useful these fucking investigator androids were. And that _he_ , of all people, had been assigned one of them. The more advanced model even. Maybe, just maybe Fowler wasn’t trying to freeze him out after all.

               Adam rolled his eyes, and it was the most human thing Gavin had seen today, aside from that whole unfamiliarity with the baseball cap and constant adjustment of it. “If you are done insisting that I ‘ate the sidewalk,’ I could show you where the traces lead.”

               They didn’t have to go far. Adam led them both past a few rusty fences and barriers, turning left into a narrow passage between two adjacent plots, one secured with barbed wire and a massive ten-foot concrete wall, the other with a sorry excuse for a site fence and eventually stopped at an old, equally rusty door in the concrete wall. A holo-sign on the door read ‘NO TRESPASSING,’ but it was a lot more recent than the door or even the wall. The grass that tried to grow in the cracks of the concrete walkway had been recently trampled, and Gavin didn’t need an android’s analytical abilities to see the fresh scratches near the lock of the door. A mechanical lock, something that had gone out of style ten years ago.

               “They went through here,” Adam said, finger lightly tapping the door, “I can force the lock.”

               “You’re meaning to tell me that you can hack the fucking Pentagon but can’t pick a lock?” It wasn’t really a question. Gavin had already hunkered down to take a closer look at the old school lock, eyes narrowed.

               “I’m sure you realize I cannot ‘hack the Pentagon,’ but you are correct. Mechanical locks are something I am unfamiliar with. Apparently Cyberlife didn’t deem it necessary to include them in my programming, as most doors with mechanical locks can be broken down easily.”

               “See, this is where being a lowlife orphan comes in handy,” the Detective said, patting his pockets before pulling out his wallet from the inside of his jacket, and then two bent pins along with a flat, long piece of metal from the coin pocket.

               “You have a lock pick in your wallet.” The android had somehow managed to import all of Nevada’s desert dryness right into his words. “I should have guessed as much.”

               Gavin held onto one of the pins with his lips, used the flat piece of metal and the other pin to gently insert them into the lock, fiddling around until he heard a characteristic click, then moved the pin ever so slightly. His words were a little slurred thanks to the pin between his lips, but he was used to talking with a smoke between his lips anyway. “Since I’m stuck with Ken instead of Barbie, who’d prolly have hairpins in her hair like in one of Anderson’s old ass movies, yeah. I do.” Not that the hairpins alone would have helped, but that wasn’t important.

               He would have time to bask in the feeling of actually knowing how to do something the android had no clue about later.

               The lock gave its last little click and Gavin turned the flat piece of metal to unlock it. “Tada,” he said, pulling his lock picks out of the lock to pocket them, then pulled the sleeve of his hoodie over the palm of his hand to push the door open, still squatting in front of it. He didn’t want to leave fingerprints. Not because he thought CSI would be in his face about it, but because it was in his best interest to not give them even more pointless shit to analyze so they would be done rather sooner than later.

               And he heard the strange noise from behind the door, like a taut wire that had been disturbed. He _heard_ it, but before his own brain even had time to react, he was being pulled off his feet by the collar, backwards, his hands and feet instinctively scrambling to find some support as his vestibular system went batshit, and then he violently jumped when the spring gun fired right through the door.

               Both policemen stared at the door in silence, Adam in a not fully completed sidestep away from the door, holding Gavin like an overstuffed shopping bag at his side, fingers still clutching the man’s rear collar along with parts of his hoodie’s hood, and the latter was too stunned to move much. The bullet, a fucking 12-gauge slug-shot that had ripped clean through the door, was now embedded in the adjacent building’s wall, right behind the shitty site fence. The only reason it hadn’t _also_ ripped through Gavin’s skull was holding him by the collar right now.

               “ _Shit_ ,” the human managed to breathe, adrenaline only now flooding his veins and making his palms sweaty. Fucking adrenaline was always late when it came to jump scares. The android pursed his lips and nodded in a strange sense of agreement before he pulled Gavin back to his feet effortlessly, making sure he had found his balance before letting go of his collar. Both men were probably turning over the same idea in their minds briefly, one of them digitally (or so Gavin called it), the other with organic matter encased in bone and fluid: It wouldn’t have been pretty if Adam had actually kicked the door in, and it wouldn’t have been pretty if he had reacted only a split second later either.

               “The plot belongs to Parallax United. I wonder if they are aware of this kind of threat on their premises,” Adam stated and for once Gavin was happy to have this kind of grounding to hold on to. This wasn’t the first time he had almost taken a bullet, shit, he had at least six scars from bullet wounds across his body, but he had very rarely been this close to just fucking dying on the spot. He could already see the writing on his insurance issued tombstone: Here lies Dumbass Reed, too fucking stupid to check a goddamn door properly before pushing it open.

               “ _Someone_ really doesn’t want people to go in there,” the Detective added, running a shaky hand through his hair, pointlessly trying to play it at least a little cool.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It does get a little disturbing and gore-y here, although it's only android gore so far, but y'know...

               One side of the large, oval desk in the middle of the room was facing a transparent wall, through which warm afternoon light filtered in. Fresh, green leaves on different kinds of trees, some of which the world had never before seen, swayed softly in an unseen breeze, colorful flowers lined the soft grass surrounded the roots and various boulders placed there for decorative purposes. However, it was the birds that made this whole holographic scene more surreal than strictly necessary, because someone had thought it a good idea to add various kinds of paradise birds. Sure, they were pretty with their overly long tail feathers, with their crowns of red and blue and gold, with their shiny feathers. Too pretty, one might argue.

               Along the table, four people were seated. A woman in her late fifties, grey hair tied up in a strict bun at the back of her head, make-up dark and prominent, although it did little to broaden her thin, hard lips in her almost scrawny face. She, like the man next to her, was wearing a lab coat, CyberLife logo on her right chest, holotag on her left, inconspicuously switching between a bar code for the remote scanners throughout the building and her ID consisting of her photo, title, name and department every ten seconds. Vanessa Moore, Head of AI Development, two PhDs.

               Next to her was an overweight man, receding hair line over a forehead with greasy skin and visible pores that continued across his face, especially notable on his broad nose. His fat fingers were idly pushing an empty mug back and forth between his two hands, CyberLife logo on one side, the slogan ‘Building a Better Future’ on the other. The mug briefly changed color from white to a gentle blue wherever warm fingers touched it. Derek Walker was written on his badge, Diagnostics and Quality Assurance.

               Across from Derek, a young woman was busy scribbling notes on a tablet with a stylus, while another pad she was copying from was lying close. Her red hair was cut short, the LED on her temple circling slowly blue, her blinks just a tad too frequent to be considered normal, relaxed even. The short, white dress she was wearing only spotted the model number on both sleeves: TL200. No serial number, nothing else to identify her as an android.

               The last person sat two chairs away from the machine with one leg propped up, knee resting against the edge of the table, blue jeans and a simple shirt appearing almost out of place here, especially because the shirt read ‘Got Root?’ in Phenix American font. Curly black hair was complemented by a pair of black-rimmed glasses the young man spotted, his fingers moving windows and tasks back and forth on the holoscreen in front of him, cast by one of the emitters situated in the table’s surface. His own badge, clipped to the collar of his shirt, only showed a barcode, never once switching to some sort of ID.

               “Everything is off the table,” the obese man stated matter-of-factly, “the Supreme Court decided it would be in everyone’s best interest to just grant amnesty to everyone involved in the Revolution in Detroit.”

               “There were over _two hundred_ charges of first-degree murder and manslaughter,” the woman sounded vexed, brow furrowing.

               “Most of them were pressed against _humans_ , Vanessa, because the damn Army kept shooting at peaceful, unarmed protesters.” Derek shrugged, pulling the corners of his mouth down to accompany his shrug. “At least that’s what the media are telling people right now.”

               “They _disabled_ faulty _machines_.” Now the woman sounded downright toxic.

               “That’s not how the general population sees it. We can’t change that.”

               “Is our RK800 unit among those being granted amnesty after it slaughtered our security?”

               “Yup.” Again, Derek shrugged, as if there was nothing they could do about it now.

               “What about the hundreds of androids it stole?”

               Across the table, the android taking notes took the second tablet, adjusted it in front of her and took the stylus from its top. Her other hand never once stopped writing, the green eyes flicking back to the other pad for only half a second ever so often. After a few opened apps and documents, her second hand started scribbling on the second tablet as well, completely independent of her first hand. Only her eyes darted back and forth, her head remained mostly unmoving.

               “What about them? They’re gone, considered _people_ now. Our storage is mostly empty except for a few prototypes here and there and units that had not yet been fully assembled when shit hit the fan. Why do you think Lucy here isn’t allowed to go online or interface with anything?” Derek said, gesturing towards the red-haired and obviously ambidextrous android.

               Verena gave the machine a brief glance, but her eyes quickly returned to her colleague. “How much did all of this cost us?”

               The obese man decided to not push the woman further, as Vanessa might just start spitting bile at him if he did. She certainly sounded like it. “18.6 Million US-Dollars. 19.8 Million if you include the deviant RK800.”

               “What about its successor?” the young man across the table asked without so much as looking up from his holoscreen. Both scientists turned to look at him, the scowl on Vanessa’s face deepening.

               “The RK900 cost us almost twice as much and we still don’t know how it got out of containment,” Derek sighed, running fat fingers across his greasy forehead.

               “I don’t understand how you fail to see the _opportunity_ in this,” the young man continued, eventually looking up from his screen. “We can kill about _five_ birds with one stone here. We have Baker on our asses because of his idiot of a son, and he’s providing substantial monetary support, which is obviously good. Money is always good. We have two RK-Units right next to the source of the problem with dormant snippets of Amanda code in their systems.”

               “What exactly are you proposing, Thomas?” Vanessa asked, eyes narrowed. The young man had her attention now.

               “The RK900 has far superior processing power. It can overload the 800’s processors and have them overheat in maybe four seconds, without damaging the rest of it. Sure, we might look at a completely molten neural core network here, depending on how fast its code is snuffed out by the 900, but we should be able to salvage its parts and erase its memories once we generously offer to see if we can save its ‘life.’ I understand it has a human it is attached to?”

               “One Lieutenant Hank Anderson, yes. We have basic biometric data about him from one of our other 800s that took him here to intervene during the Revolution,” Vanessa said, leaning back in her chair.

               “That human will probably want it saved or repaired or whatever, and people tend to see us as some fucked-up android hospital right now. It should be easy to convince that man to hand the 800 over.”

               “What about the RK900? I don’t know if it is enough to—”

               Tom raised a finger to interrupt Vanessa, his lips forming an amused smirk. “We’ll have to use Eve for it anyway. The 900’s firewalls are quite something and it is able to re-write its own code on the fly. It’s like trying to chop the head off a Hydra while two more heads regenerate to bite you in the ass, so we need brute force. We’ll have it kill its human partner after destroying the 800, and that’s that. Baker will be off our asses about his fucking son if we remove the investigating party, we’ll take the obviously faulty RK900 unit back to protect the population from it and to investigate what caused its _malfunction_ …” He ended with a gentle gesture with one hand.

               “And how exactly are you planning to _deploy_ Eve?” Derek sounded both intrigued and skeptical as he leaned forward in his chair, finally letting go of the mug he had been toying with. “It’s not like we can just send an e-mail with a seventeen Terabyte executable virus and name it ‘Your Receipt from the Apple Store’ or something.”

               “The RK900 is investigating destroyed androids due to the clues Baker’s idiot son left with its human partner. We don’t even need to run after them with Eve, they’ll run after the virus, trust me. I’ll prepare one of our leftover Tracis, you make sure Baker’s son receives it as a gift he can fuck up.”

               “This might actually _work_ ,” Vanessa mused after a moment, her gaze following one of the bright yellow and green paradise birds in the hologram behind Thomas.

 

               * * *

 

               “Holy _fuck_.”

               It was the one thing Gavin managed to utter. ‘Fuck’ in itself was a wonderfully versatile word, because it could be used in any situation and aimed at anyone and anything, and it could also mean anything, depending on the intonation. It could be the obvious curse, it could be praise, it could be an insult or simply a more or less factual description of something. Right now, it was the only thing that his brain managed to come up with as he slowly brushed the plastic sheet he had just stepped through from his shoulder and arm, service pistol pointed at the concrete floor, finger on the trigger guard and safety off.

               After they had climbed into the abandoned Parallax United warehouse through an already broken window, Adam had insisted on opening the next few doors as he wouldn’t die as easily as Gavin would, or so he claimed. Gavin, who had started referring to himself as the meatbag of this team-up had noted that if something blasted the android’s head to smithereens, their chance of survival would be quite similar, but Adam would have none of that. They hadn’t run into any other spring guns, explosive traps, tripwires, laser beams or people trying to kill them, fortunately – the building was empty, and even when they entered the basement after some trouble with the massive steel door sealing it, Adam was almost sure they were alone down here: No traces of carbon dioxide from human breathing, no wireless data transmissions in their close proximity from androids.

               Technically, he had been correct.

               They had still been careful with the basement, because ‘most people get fucking murdered in other people’s basements,’ as Gavin had pointed out, which was obviously bullshit, but Adam hadn’t quite understood the shitty movie reference he had made. With the android rounding corners and opening doors first, the Detective right behind him, one hand on his holstered gun and a strange feeling in his gut, they had followed the trail of evaporated Thirium past an old and rusty ground-source heat pump, past ruined switchgear, cables hanging out like someone had tried to eviscerate the cabinets, and finally towards a door that stood out like a sore thumb because it was brand fucking new, recently embedded in the old brickwork down here. It had been the moment Gavin had drawn his gun and Adam had folded his cap to store it in one of his jacket’s pockets, maybe because he needed the rest of all the finely tuned sensors in that head of his.

               The door itself, despite its brand-new retinal scanner locking mechanism, had been no problem for Adam and his weird plastic-white hand with the even weirder liquid skin stuff retracting, but even Gavin’s worst guesses what would be behind the damn door weren’t enough to prepare him for what they were looking at now. The only light came from a single, buzzing strip light above the door, but it was fucking enough to witness this _nightmare_ they had stepped into.

               The whole room was draped in plastic sheets to conceal the walls behind, even the ceiling had been covered in plastic. Something that reminded the Detective of an iron bench, bolted to the floor, was situated in the middle, a welded and equally bolted iron stool next to it, and adjacent to that something he could only describe as a stake – mainly because there was an android torso hanging from it, the metal rod, about as thick as Gavin’s forearm, entering through its crotch and coming out of its back. He had to forcefully tear his eyes away from the torso before his brain had a chance to figure out if that android had vaginal or anal cavities and if it had been staked through one of those. It was enough that the liquid skin was still covering parts of it, giving it a well-rounded pair of breasts with one nipple cut or torn off, although any spilled Thirium that had come in contact with oxygen had long since evaporated.

               Another body was slumped against the bench, most of its liquid skin gone to expose the white carbon composite beneath, the reinforced pieces and plates partly cracked, partly burned, partly deformed to the point where whole chunks had just broken off. The body itself was only missing its head, a separated android arm had instead been shoved down its throat with enough force to split its neck like a boiled oyster. The upper arm along with the hand was sticking out, fingers cramped, as if they were trying to reach to the heavens for help.

               A digital camera mounted on a tripod was standing in front of the whole setup, cables running from it to some power outlet in the back of the room, another cable probably for some external storage device was now lying disconnected at the tripod’s feet. Gavin could tell it was an older model, one of those that didn’t immediately save recorded material to a cloud, one that didn’t have Wi-Fi, one that was not hackable without physical contact. Smart motherfuckers.

               On top of that, a head with all of its skin and hair intact was lying in front of whatever this whole thing was, red strands of said hair spilled around the skull like ink in a puddle, a sticky, almost transparent substance on its face, smeared across its lips and apparently having leaked from its disconnected neck. Gavin didn’t want to _know_ what that substance was, but somehow, he already knew. _Someone_ had skull-fucked a disconnected android head. From both sides. And recorded the whole thing.

               “Holy…” he breathed, unable to even add the obligatory ‘fuck’ to that, unable to keep his eyes from roaming. He had seen a lot of shit in his life, but he had never been the first to see a snuff porn crime scene. It shouldn’t have been as bad due to the victims being androids, but somehow… that didn’t help. He would have reacted no different to human bodies, though the smell might have been worse.

               For long seconds, Adam was silent next to him, only the rustle of his jacket’s fabric telling Gavin that he had started to move. He took two steps forward that seemed so very stiff, so very calculated, even to Gavin, but it still took him two more seconds to figure out why: Adam could see all the Thirium that had been spilled here. He was probably standing in a fucking _pool_ of it right now, and for once, Gavin understood that stupid saying about ignorance and bliss.

               Adam reached for the severed head, skin peeling back from his fingers, almost as if it didn’t want to touch the whole mess lying before them, and he felt himself frowning. This was something CSI should busy themselves with. Of course, the android wouldn’t leave DNA traces or fingerprints or anything like that, but it was still several kinds of fucked up to touch a severed head with semen all over and inside it.

               The second Adam’s bare, white fingers touched its temple, the head’s eyes snapped open violently and it started fucking _screaming_. Most of its voice modulators must have either remained in the torso or had been fucked up so badly that it sounded like a scream through a bad mobile connection or a busted speaker, but it was genuinely one of the most terrified and terrifying sounds Gavin had ever heard, not only because it was coming from a goddamn severed head obviously still aware.

               The Detective didn’t even _remotely_ match Adam’s speed, strength or reaction time. He stumbled when his shooting hand was yanked forward, his finger scraping across the trigger guard as it was pushed aside by the android’s finger, the recoil of seven fired bullets dampened by the fact that another hand was clamped firmly around his. The screaming head was torn to pieces right in front of them, each bullet causing it to tumble further back into the room, but not a single bullet missed its mark. Fresh Thirium stained the floor, the grotesque equipment and even the plastic on the ceiling while parts of the skull casing, a busted eye, artificial teeth and hair were flying in all directions.

               Gavin didn’t notice how Blue Blood had also splattered across his left cheek, tiny, innocent looking drops in almost a straight line, dark blue against his chin and stubble.

               “Adam,” he heard himself say calmly, years of crisis intervention and basic psychology training kicking in like they hadn’t in a really long time. He just would have never dreamed of ever using them on an android. “Open your fingers. Relax your hand. You need to let go of my gun.”

               His voice sounded muffled to his own ears ringing from the gunshots, the smell of powder and fresh Thirium in his nose. The latter was most likely imaginary, but to him, it smelled like burned plastic right now. He carefully thumbed the safety on while the android did what was asked of him. He relaxed his fingers, pulled his hand away slowly, and Gavin felt himself releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

               This was nothing like taking a rookie to a crime scene, fresh from the academy, enthusiastic and hopeful, only to have their positive view of the world shattered by what humans were capable of. This was worse _, so much worse_. Stumbling into something like this with a human was horrible, of course, and it could and almost always would traumatize them to some extent. But the human mind and soul was a marvelous thing – it was capable of self-repair, it was capable of coping with even the worst nightmares one way or the other, and even if it wasn’t, there were specialists and medication to help people. Psychology wasn’t magic that would heal everyone instantly, Gavin knew that, but there were mechanisms in place to provide support.

               Humans had the benefit of growing up and actually _learning_ how to be human over years, over decades. They had been children that had had some sort of parental figure teaching them how to be kind, how to care because they had been cared for. They had been teenagers, allowed to disregard any and all advice adults had given them, instead making the same mistakes others had made because that was the only way to really _learn_ something. They grew up figuring shit out on their own but not unguided, they loved and hated their life at the same time, they rebelled against their parents or guardians, they fell in love too hard and too quick and with the wrong people, and after 20-something years, they had the very basics of _how to adult_ down.

               Androids didn’t have that luxury. Of course, Gavin had _no_ idea how it actually felt to be a programmed machine suddenly experiencing emotions, but if it was even close to waking up from a coma with full-fledged amnesia and no idea how humans, the world and especially emotions worked, he would have called it hell on earth. Mankind had created a golem in its own image and accidentally given it a soul, and now that golem had been pushed out into the cold, wide world without so much as a manual on how to live.

               And for the first time, Gavin didn’t see an android as he glanced sideways at Adam, but a living being with a soul that had just received its first major scar, much too early in its short life.

               “C’mon,” he muttered, carefully holstering his gun, “let’s get out of here and call this shit in. I need a smoke.”

               It felt strangely comforting to be able to put his hand on the golem’s shoulder without hesitation, to gently but firmly turn it away from that nightmare they had discovered.


End file.
